Puppies Redux: AU 501 High Risk, High Reward
by Jedi's Pal
Summary: This is a REPOSTING from our shipper wish fulfilment series that changes up the Season Five premiere starting with S5 E1 Company Man. This is a REPOSTING of "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies" (Chapters 7-9) and "Reconnecting" (Chapters 3, 10 & 15), combining together those T and M rated stories so it can be read in one comprehensive continuous storyline for the 5.01 AU.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N:**_ _Thank you all once again for your appreciation and enthusiasm for the REPOST of the 6.01 AU "This is My Island in the Sun."_

 _There is also a brand new chapter of "Be Brave Little Angel" over on the main page and any reviews would definitely be appreciated. Writers live for feedback, so please feed the animals_

 _This is a REPOST of Chapters 7-9 of_ _ **Puppies, Kittens & Gun Toting Babies**_ _and Chapters 3, 10 & 15 of __**Reconnecting**_ _. Season Five was the first time there was a gap in the storyline that matched the gap between the Season Four finale and the Season Five premiere and we couldn't help but wonder what could have happened during that timeframe if Michael didn't see Fiona for the entire six months._

 _This begins with Michael on plane home following Hector's capture, reviewing what's happened to him since Larry had returned to haunt him and Vaughn Anderson's forces had trapped them all in an abandoned hotel. This is where the similarities between the opening scenes of 5.01 "Company Man" and this AU end._

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2011_

" _Teach me something," he'd challenged as they'd stood in the woods surrounding their target's house._

" _You say that like I didn't teach you damned near everything you know," Larry had shot back._

 _He'd tried to save the life of one of those sorry son of bitches who'd burned him, but the bastard's days of dirty double dealing at the IMF were over the minute Larry Sizemore had come into Albert Mercado's soon to be extinguished life. Why had he fought so hard to save someone who'd helped to ruin his life?_

" _Jesus, every time I come back here there is less of you in there. You're bottling up your darkness, all the rage, all the good stuff that makes you who you are!"_

 _Larry had been shouting at him, yelling exactly what he'd already been thinking, though not in the same way his former mentor had meant it. "That sonuvabitch, he helped burn you, he deserved to die. Are you gonna tell me different, huh?"_

 _Of course Mercado deserved to die, they all did, including the murderous psychopath who was standing in front of him, berating him as he had when they were partners and they weren't partners, not anymore. They all deserved to die… truth be told, he himself deserved to die, too._

" _There it is… There's the look… They took your life away. I know what you wanna do, give yourself permission."_

" _What makes you think I won't start with you?" How many times had he had the opportunity to do that and hadn't taken the shot. He knew who and what Larry was. Why had he let him live all those times?_

" _Because you are lost and because I am the way back and deep down you know that."_

 _He had nearly been lost so many times since they had burned him, so many times since they'd forced him out of Ireland, but most especially those times when he'd worked with the man in front of him, the one raging at him for not being the cold blooded killer he'd wanted him to be._

" _I can't stand watching you waste who you are, what you have inside, what we could have been!"_

 _The thought of who he could have been if they had still been a team reverberated in his head until he remembered what he'd told Larry, remembered how he'd walked away calm and assured. Once again, Sam Axe had been there for him, had been there to save him from Larry as he'd saved him from himself._

" _You're not gonna do it, Larry, cuz if you shoot me, Sam'll kill you where you stand and, while I'd give my life for something I believe in, there's not a thing in this world that you'd die for. Wanna know the difference between you and me? I really do know you and you only think you know me."_

That thought about his friend, _his best friend he'd amended_ , about the former Navy SEAL and Lieutenant Commander had chased the ghost of Larry Sizemore to the back of his brain as Sam had always done when the confrontation between them had been physical and not just mental.

The exhaustion of these last six months was starting to tell on him now that Mr Westen had been taken out of the game for the moment and made to sit on the side lines these last few hours. _He didn't need a rest, dammit, he needed to finish this as fast as possible_. Sitting on a black flight that boarded at 22:00 hours and wouldn't get him back on the ground until at least 02:00 had left him sitting still for four hours too long and had left him with too much time on his hands _._

 _As he'd told Raines,_ _he didn't want answers, he_ needed _them_.

Thinking about the mission and where it had taken him, Panama, Brussels, Seattle, Columbia, Ottawa and other stops along the way, hadn't led to him being more focused on the mission, but rather had turned his mind to where he was headed and who he'd left behind there. His frustration at the man who recruited him mounted.

 _They were at a critical juncture_ …. _why had Raines sent him back to Miami?_

He needed to stay centered on taking apart the organization that burned him, so he _could_ go back to the people he'd left behind _without_ this millstone around his neck. The fact that his exact status with the Agency, civilian intelligence asset, independent contractor, reinstated agent or officially retired not fired, hadn't been quite settled. Yet it didn't matter, finishing those people who'd muddied that water did.

 _Sam had been a soldier. Sam had worked with him on multiple covert operations, both as a Ranger and as a spy. Sam understood what he was up against. Sam got the whole compartmentalization thing in a way the women in his life never would, though they both understood about the necessity of keeping secrets and were practiced in the art themselves._

 _They just didn't happen to like it when that need involved him and only begrudgingly tolerated it as a fact of his life._

 _The ex-SEAL understood what it meant to seek redemption. Sam had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy for standing up for the little guy regardless of whose toes he'd stepped on, although admittedly Mr. Axe had gotten himself in his own unique brand of trouble with an admiral's wife. There was a huge I-told-you-so card on that table Mike almost never played._

 _Sure, the older man had spied on him when he'd first found himself stuck in Miami, but Sam had kept him from going off the reservation countless times these past four years because Sam understood what he was going through. Sam Axe deserved better than what he'd gotten from him as a friend in exchange for his unwavering…_

" _You want this data, Mike? You're gonna have to steal yourself because I'm not gonna give it to you. And hey, if that makes me the Boy Scout you and your friend Larry think I am, man I'm okay with that!"_

 _Okay, maybe unwavering support was a bit strong…_ but Michael was forced to admit that he had needed that proverbial kick in the ass at the time. Unfortunately, remembering the rest of the conversation had sent him in a direction he hadn't wanted to go, to a place he hesitated to confront…

" _I'm not gonna help you any more until you get your head outta your ass! Hey, you want backup at your meeting with Carlos? Call Fi."_

 _This wasn't Sam's fight, yet the man had stuck by him at the risk of his own life and limb and pursuit of happiness. Fiona... Fiona had..._ Sitting alone on that government Learjet with no one for company but the crew and nothing but time on his hands, he still couldn't begin to process the mental gymnastics necessary at that moment to explain to himself the changes to his connection with Fiona Glenanne during this past year...

" _Maybe this isn't your fight, Fi. Just because it's my path doesn't mean it's yours."_

" _Maybe you're right."_

 _Truly not the time to be having that conversation, trying to set up a road block with the enemy breathing down their necks, but she wouldn't let it go, or maybe she just couldn't... She'd challenged him to explain how this was anything but a "lose-lose" proposition for her and that had been his answer: if you're not with me on this, then you're_ not with me _._

" _This may be your war, but we're all caught in the crossfire-"_

" _Fiona!"_

" _Save it. You can apologize if we live."_

 _So many stress-filled, harsh, hurt, angry words, so many years of misunderstanding made raw by imminent death._

" _That should give you a window to get out with the list."_

" _That's a suicide mission for you."_

 _One last chance, one last plea and one last time, pushing her away, pushing her onto another path, possibly into the arms of another man, to try and save her from the fate of being entangled with him._

" _Michael…"_

" _You said it yourself, Fiona. Maybe it's time you went your own way."_

 _He'd told his old mentor that he knew him, but that the man didn't really know him at all. Apparently, the same truth held for him in his relationship with the woman who'd been his asset and become so much more._

" _What the hell are you doing here?"_

" _What does it look like?" she'd shot back while shooting back at their adversaries. "I'm tired of you making all the decisions in this relationship." She looked like she almost wanted to shoot him in that given second as much as Vaughn's men. "Is this thing ready to go?"_

" _Fi, you don't have to be here. You know you—" Of course she didn't HAVE to be there. She wasn't SUPPOSED to be there. How could you save someone who insisted into running head long into danger? The irony wasn't wasted on him either._

" _What, run? Come on, Michael. You saw the pattern of fire out there. I wouldn't make it 10 feet. When it's time, we'll do this together... I was always so much better with explosives than you."_

 _He had laughed and almost cried simultaneously at her statement because there was a truth contained in her words greater than the fact that she had been taught the bomb makers art by a master chemist at a young age, a truth he'd wished he'd had more than the last five seconds of his life to process._

 _And then he'd gotten that opportunity he'd longed for and instead had promptly disappeared into a mysterious black limo in search of another truth, a broader, more dangerous reality that threatened to eclipse more than the truly important thing he'd just learned._

"We'll be landing in fifteen minutes," a disembodied voice announced.

Michael opened his eyes and let them adjust to the lighting slowly, though there was very little of it inside the cabin of the plane. The sun wasn't up just yet, but it wouldn't be long before it was.

He had a desire to arrive before the darkness had abated for a variety of tactical and personal reasons. To sacrifice oneself as he was prepared to do for the good of the mission, for the good of his comrades in arms, that was a concept he readily understood and, although as a spy he had spent his life preparing, nothing in his training or in his experience had prepared him for Fiona's decision to die together rather than live on separately.

()()()()()()

The closer he got to the loft in the black Ford Crown Victoria with the dark tinted windows that the Agency had provided for his use, the more he couldn't get his mind off of what he would and wouldn't find there. The Charger had had its Enterprise moment on the chase from the nuclear plant when he'd had to sacrifice it in an attempt to evade Vaughn's men. Fiona's Hyundai was what he was anticipating finding and hopefully not in the same condition he'd last seen it, which was full of bullet holes after a job gone sideways, or so she had said.

He smiled briefly at her reaction to finding her electric blue baby sitting there, damage repaired and good as new, courtesy of his new friends in the auto business, the Taylor brothers. His prior contact had lost the Triple H Auto Body Repair to a grand jury investigation sometime between his leaving Miami and his forced return. It was his parting gift to her before he'd had to kiss her goodbye, a long and almost tearful thing, and then get back into the black Suburban they'd given him that time, driving away to the mission he'd been anticipating since he'd heard those fateful words. _Sometimes that flat, emotionless voice declaring him black listed still troubled him at night, along with the screams of dead factory workers and the soft whimpers of terrified children._

Michael shook his head forcefully and pushed those sounds out of his mind. Once again, he turned his focus to what awaited him. He'd only been back to his home town twice very early on in the operation. The first time came after ten days in CIA custody, sitting in a room answering questions for a week and then another week working out the parameters of the plan that would see him and his newly assigned handler, Max Grant and his team, work their way through the NOC list until they got to the top of this hydra of an organization and finally cut off its real head.

The second time, he'd been gone a month. He was headed to the Caribbean and was sufficiently ahead of Max that he was able to convince Agent Grant to grant him a couple days layover in Miami en route and was very appreciative of the favor.

Michael knew once the manhunt had commenced in earnest, there would be no coming back until it was done and little opportunity for any kind of communication. He owed Fiona more of an explanation than he'd been able to give her when he'd left that encoded note in her bag the first time he'd seen her since his release.

Yes, it was bad trade craft, but unless a virtually defunct Irish Republican terrorist organization broke into the loft and tossed it and her personal belongings without getting shot, even then if they had found the message, they would have had a hard time decoding it and/or assigning any meaning to it.

As the Miami native navigated the traffic from the CIA hangar at Opa Locka Airport, he thought about how he'd come back to the smell of cheap booze and smoke permeating the loft. Finding Fiona passed out on his bed, obviously beaten and apparently inebriated, had caused his heart to skip a beat or two. The image of her sprawled out, bloodied and unconscious, had haunted him.

He remembered the stories Sean had told him while the visiting Irishman gotten his almost brother-in-law on the side when O'Neil had come a calling to have words with him about what his sister had done in the wake of McBride's abrupt departure, about the things she'd done to finish off the REAL IRA in his absence that had cut him to the quick, things that sometimes included drunken bar brawls and part of his heart had seized up with guilt.

But he was good at putting things in a box and moving on, so he had.

Michael parked on the street, opposite the club in Oleg's reserved spot, both watching the building and contemplating the contradiction that was Fiona Glenanne. She'd been a tigress who'd pointed a machine pistol at him and then had repeatedly tried to seduce him, though she could barely stand up straight unaided. But, there was also the helpless kitten quality she'd projected when he'd found her lying there in the bathtub, looking small and vulnerable where she'd passed out again after washing up, as he'd returned from changing the ruined bed sheets. Later on, he'd given those linens a burn notice all of their own in a trash barrel down by the docks while she'd slept.

The pictures flooded his brain: of tending to her, of washing all the debris of that job gone bad from her hair, of drying and dressing her and her wounds with bare minimum cooperation from her, of watching her sleep and spooning the 'medicine' down her throat to keep her comfortable enough to sleep, of watching her come awake to the meal he'd prepared for her, of making quiet love to her and spending the night cocooned around her warm and for once not restless body. Soon enough he was out of the car and headed towards the woman that had captivated his mind, taking up every bit of the rare and precious idle time he'd had in the last six months.

As the dark haired man slipped between the patrons jostling one another in line, he thought of the suit clothes and the jewelry he taken with him. Smooth Talking Johnny was going to take a special someone dancing when this was all over. _Why the hell had Raines taken him off the interrogation and send him back to Miami?_ But that nagging query disappeared as soon as Michael saw that the parking space below the loft was empty.

 _Was she out on another job?_ As he walked cautiously up the stairs, something made him reach for the hardware tucked in the back of his waistband. The spy eased the door open and was peering into the darkness beyond the opening when he was slammed with the door and the weapon snatched from his grasp.

Michael pushed back against the heavy metal object and heard a grunt as it bounced off whoever was behind it. Strong hands grabbed him by the forearms and swung him towards the staircase near the center of the room. A circular fan, one of Fi's snow globes and a ceramic mug were all victims of the battle as he and his attacker wrestled to get a hold on one another. Pushing his opponent away, he came around the back of stairs, only to be met on the left side of the staircase and slammed up against the wire mesh that surrounded it so hard the dartboard was knocked off in the process. Mr. Westen flailed, trying to get his balance, and sent a small night lamp crashing to the floor.

A muscular limb pressed across his throat and a gun barrel into his stomach. Before he could make counter move, the smell of familiar cologne instead of perfume hit his nose and the identity of his assailant was on this lips as he blurted out the name in surprise.

"Sam, what the hell are you doing?"

Michael staggered a bit as he was released and then light flooded the loft as the former SEAL snapped on the recessed fixtures at the back of the loft. The sight of Sam Axe wearing fatigues accessorized with night vision goggles and an equipment belt boggled his brain momentarily. Without the loose fitting clothing, it was immediately apparent that his friend had dropped quite a bit of weight and must had spent time doing something besides drinking heavily and romancing women since he'd seen him last. Suddenly, he couldn't remember when he'd previously seen Sam looking so military, right down to the boots, and without a Tommy Bahamas shirt.

"Damn, Mikey, thanks for a chance to test the old reflexes there, but give a fella some warning next time."

As he looked around the loft, Mr. Westen realized why he'd had such a hard time seeing the assault coming. The windows were covered with some kind of film that blocked the available light and had given Sam the obvious advantage. He walked over to finger the panes behind the untouched bed and then ran the palm of his hand over it.

"You like that stuff?" the older man queried as he headed towards the refrigerator. "It's one way film that not only keeps anyone from seeing in, it cuts the light at night. Works pretty good, I'd say. Well, since you're here, I guess that means we get a celebratory beer? Are we done yet? What's the latest?"

Michael joined him at the breakfast bar as the man put a couple of cold ones on top of the worn wooden surface.

"Not quite yet. What's going on, Sam? Where's Fiona?"

"Uh, yeah, about that," Sam said, looking down as he popped the top to both beers without meeting his other man's eyes. "Ya might wanna take a seat while I fill you in about that." He pushed the Heisler towards the other side of the bar.

"Why?" he demanded, immediately fearing the worst. "Is she hurt?"

"No, no, relax, brother. Fi's fine, she's just busy right now."

"Busy?" he echoed. "Busy with what?" The possibilities were already growing at alarming proportions.

"You know, Mikey, I don't know where you get the idea that life just stops for the rest of us while you're off on these crusades of yours," Sam sat down heavily on the bar stool and finally looked his friend full in the face. "But the crazies still come around when you're gone and yours truly here gets the honor of trying to keep Tinkerbell from blowing everything all to hell while we're dealing with it."

"You mean like you did at O'Sullivans," Michael questioned rhetorically.

"Hey, I never said it was easy. In fact, with you gone, I'm just a man down and up one mad bomber with anger management issues. Are we almost done with these guys? Cuz I gotta tell ya, brother, we sure could use your help here on the home front."

"Care to be a little more specific? Like why you're over here rehearsing for the Team Six reunion and why you still haven't told me where Fiona is?"

"Come on, Mike, I'll give you the tour of my new operations center, which coincidentally used to be your home," Sam said with a weary smile. Coming around the wooden barrier, he clapped his friend on the shoulder and turned the younger man towards the staircase, which Michael noticed had been covered in wire mesh as he ascended the stairs.

"Controlling the access points," he remarked as they came around the top.

"Sammy's still got it." He paused next to a dumb founded Michael. "When I need it."

Mr Westen stared at the state of the art computer system that had replaced the old PC which had once sat in the left hand corner. Surrounding the landing was two inch thick sheet metal that the spy immediately knew was bullet proof. The couch was the same, but the amount of firearms, C-4, RDX, det cord, blasting caps, ready-made charges and grenades around it left him a little speechless. _And he had thought he was the one fighting an all-out war out there in the real world._

"Sam, where did all this stuff come from? This looks like the contents of Fi's storage locker in Hialeah."

"Good eye, but it's half, actually. Your girlfriend's got the other half of her stash with her. Jesse hooked us up with the tech though, the latest and the greatest in integrated security systems."

"uh... and CIFA just let him borrow all this?" His disbelief was apparent.

"Seriously, Mike?" Sam cocked an eyebrow at the dark haired man and then grinned. "No, this little gem came courtesy of SecuriCorp. I have to say, brother, I was really impressed how quickly Jess was able to wrangle this."

"SecuriCorp? You mean, Jesse's not with CIFA, anymore?" Mr Porter had been cleared of all charges and reinstated following Michael's return to the CIA fold. It had been one of the demands he'd made of Raines in exchange for his cooperation on the operation, not that they could have kept him from going if they tried. But it had been nice to be able to make amends for getting Jesse burned.

"You're really gonna have to read the memos if you aren't gonna show up for the meetings, Mikey."

Michael shook his head slightly as he tried to process that particular piece of news. Jesse had been almost as angry and determined as he had been to right the wrong and return to his job and _now he had just quit...?_

Before the covert operative could make his next inquiry, a red light began flashing on the computer in concert with a low sounding alarm.

"Aw, dammit!" Sam declared as he reached to the floor and grabbed a heavy leather bag. Straightening up, he looked at his friend's puzzled expression and answered before he asked.

"That's the hot line. Someone's in your Ma's house. We gotta go, brother. I'll fill you in on the way there. Where'd you'd park the Bat-Mobile?"

()()()()()()

As they were flying low through the Miami streets in the near dawn light using his Agency issued vehicle, all the better to keep local law enforcement from detaining them, Mr Axe had brought Michael up to speed on what had been happening in his absence.

Jesse had indeed quit CIFA and gone on to work for the most premiere security consulting firm in the southeast, possibly on the Atlantic seaboard. Besides the pay increase, the perks had been beneficial for both Mr Porter and his friends. As it turned out, they had needed them. Plus it left them with contacts in the government they could actually contact unlike Michael.

The first sign that trouble was a foot was Madeline reporting additional surveillance around her home, especially since the prodigal son Nate and his pregnant wife had returned from Vegas and rented a house nearby. Initially the team had suspected that the younger Westen's former associates were sniffing around looking to connect and collect. While that had been the case in certain instances, odd occurrences and unexplained coincidences had continue to pile up, not only at the Westens' households, but in and around the loft and at the impound yard where the four thousand pounds of mangled metal that used to be Michael's car was stored.

Then had come the kicker.

Two cars had approached Nate's limo while he was driving the missus to a medical appointment. Without any other witnesses, it was hard to say with any real assurance whether the younger sibling had been targeted by his brother's enemies, his own or was merely the unfortunate victim of that all too common Florida driving hazard known as road rage. But the doubt was enough to put the whole team on high alert. If it wasn't an accident, whoever had staged it was very, very good at their craft. The only reason Nate and his wife had survived the resulting crash at all was the heavy body frame of the sedan and their seat belts.

Unfortunately, the accident claimed the life of their unborn son. Two weeks spent in the hospital recovering from her minor injuries, devastating loss and _coming to her senses,_ _so she said_ , had culminated in Mrs. Ruth Westen leaving behind Miami, her husband, her hospital bill, a credit card charge for a plane ticket and a strongly worded letter from a divorce attorney.

Admittedly, while Michael certainly wished his brother all the best, he really hadn't expected Nate's marriage or approaching fatherhood to end particularly well, but this was the last thing he had anticipated or wanted. That he and his friends would be targeted was an unfortunate fact of their lives, but that a true innocent had perished before ever having the chance to get started had truly saddened him and then shortly thereafter had made his blood boil.

When Maddie and the team had returned home with a grieving Nate to find their family heirloom bible, thick coat of dust and all, was lying open on the dining room table with the passage Psalms 30:5 highlighted in gold, then that had been enough to rally the troops. Fiona had taken the two remaining Westens into a protective custody of her own, Sam had taken over sentry duty at the loft and intensified his previous efforts vis a vis getting back into his old Navy working clothes and Jesse had made available as many of his new and old employers' resources as he reasonably could, given his status as the former golden boy of CIFA.

To say that learning all this in the ten minute hell for leather ride from the loft to his childhood home had put Michael back in super spy mode would have been a gross understatement.

Processing his emotions was entirely secondary to gathering intelligence on this new incursion into his personal life. As much as it felt like a sneak attack with tragic results, he had learned over the years that nothing was ever as simple as it appeared on the surface.

Now Raines' reprieve had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

He knew his friend would be concerned when he had practically leapt out of the vehicle and raced towards his mother's empty house. But Michael had no intention of kicking the front door open and Sam's worries were proved unfounded as the former Ranger had quickly conducted a perimeter check of the grounds while the ex-SEAL had surveyed the garage to determine there was no threat forthcoming from that angle.

Intending to breech the kitchen and front doors simultaneously, both men were surprised when they each found their respective doors unlocked. Mr Westen eased in through the front door while Sam took the longer route through the kitchen and moved immediately to the bedrooms down the long narrow hallway past the laundry room. As Mr Axe returned from clearing the back of the house, Michael noted his friend glancing up over his head and was pleased to see the lock Sam had obviously installed on the attic hatch firmly in place. Later, they would see what was up there, but for now he was satisfied there was no imminent attack from above.

"Whatcha got there, Mike?" Sam queried, coming to stand by the younger man's side at the dining room table.

"Another message," he answered, pointing at the highlighted passage. _"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."_

And though he was standing next to his best friend in his mom's living room right at that moment, in his head he was in another time and place, walking on a beach with someone completely different, in more ways than one.

" _What does the bible decode?"_

" _Oh, I'm not goin to tell. Let's put it this way. You deliver that book to Mr Barrett he'll have everything he needs to wipe out Vaughn and his ilk completely. Let him, Michael. You'll be free. Free to go gunning for Barrett yourself if that's what you want."_

" _Why tell me any of this?"_

" _I would have worked with the devil himself to take down those sons of bitches who burned us. Sadly, the devil wasn't available, so I'll have to pin my hopes on you. Go get them, brother."_

"Care to enlighten us pagans what it means?" Sam joked, trying to ease the tension he saw building in the tightening of his friend's jaw and the narrowing of those blue eyes that were growing icier by the second.

"It means we have a problem."

()()()()()()

"I need to know if a prisoner is still in custody," Michael's tone was clipped and deliberate despite having to repeat the request more than once. "Yes, of course, I'll wait." _What else could he possibly be doing?_

After having done a thorough check of Madeline's house and the attic, they had discovered two things. All of Sam and Jesse's security measures were intact and untouched, which meant hopefully that surveillance footage would be available shortly. The pair had also learned that someone had installed their own cameras and listening devices in the 'locked' attic. Jesse had arrived with a single companion, as to minimize the number of outsiders involved in this case and keep it off everyone's radar. According to Mr Porter, the slender Asian woman at his side was worth an entire Geek Squad team and would be able to do wonders.

Sam and Michael went back to the loft to regroup and revise their current risk assessment before calling Fiona. The older man was upstairs coordinating with Jesse and his one-woman tech team back at Casa Westen while the younger man was pacing out on the balcony, trying to hold his temper and longing to hear someone's voice.

"This is a matter of national security." _He was going to be the threat to a national security agency if he didn't get some answers pronto!_ "Get me Raines now!" he snapped after being advised he had insufficient security clearance to be provided the desired information. He knew when he'd been told that Assistant Director Raines was unavailable that no one was going tell him _directly_ whether or not Simon had escaped. He had just wanted someone to tell Raines to call him back immediately because he needed to know the status of Mr. Escher's captivity since being transferred into the CIA's more _humane_ care.

He looked up to see Sam watching him with a slightly bemused look on his face and Michael was sure they were both thinking about their mutual friend whose fondness for problem solving whilst striding around a room was legendary in intelligence circles, although they had both agreed over a decade ago to never speak of her again. He let out a long breath through his teeth and went inside to get a bottle of water, settle in the ugly green chair and try to wait.

"Michael..." William Raines had sounded as frustrated as his former recruit felt when he'd finally gotten back on the line. "I've been trying to get in contact with you. We need you-"

" _And I need_ to know if a certain psychopath that the CIA is supposed to be keeping tabs on has escaped," he cut him off. "So you can ask me anything you want while you're finding out if Simon Escher is still where he's supposed to be."

Apparently, Raines was momentarily at a loss of words, but it didn't last long. "Hold on."

Michael dropped his head into his free hand, covering his eyes and shaking it slowly. At least they weren't hanging up on him instead of leaving him hanging. _The tension building in his neck muscles was nothing compared to the aggravation of not being able to see or hear or touch her…_

When he'd first approached the loft, he'd been a little bit apprehensive about what sort of reception he would get since she hadn't acknowledged the text he'd sent once his current boss had informed him there was a plane going wheels up at 22:00 and he had better be on it. Ire at Raines for cutting him out of Hector's interrogation had openly warred with the desire to see her.

Now all he wanted to do was get off this call so he could go see her as soon as possible. Sitting next to the bed, reminiscing about the last time they had shared it, had shared each other, was not helping his patience any. Worse yet, Raines returning to the line and informing him that it would take time to verify and that he expected Michael to be on the next plane back to DC within the hour to move forward the stalled interrogation of Hector had done nothing to improve his temper.

Mr Westen dropped the hand holding the phone into his lap and threw his head back, rolling his eyes at the ceiling and clenching his jaw so hard that he was amazed his teeth hadn't shattered.

"Not good news?" Sam guessed as he descended the stairs. The former SEAL didn't need anything more than his friend's expression and the fact that Michael's upper lip had disappeared to know the answer to his own inquiry.

"What's Fiona's number?" he asked with an exasperated sigh.

Sam went to the refrigerator and retrieved the two pre-offered beers before digging into one of his many pants pockets and handing the burner phone to the dark haired man in the dark mood.

"Speed Dial 1, brother. I'll be upstairs if you need me."

Michael took a minute to compose himself before getting up and going back out onto the balcony before dialing.

"Any news, Sam?" came the breathless voice and he realized he'd just how much he'd been longing for it. _Why hadn't he just called her before now?_ Hearing Fiona had opened that box where he kept his feelings for her locked up safely away.

"Fi...?"

"Michael? My God, Michael, is that really you? Are you alright? Are you back? Is it over?" Her questions tumbled one atop of another and he wasn't sure which one to answer first.

"Fiona, are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm here taking care of your mom and Nate. They're okay, too."

For some reason, the covert operative was overcome with a rush of emotion at her words and he found himself blinking back unbidden, unexpected tears and swallowing hard before he spoke.

"I'm sorry, Fiona..." He wasn't sure what exactly he was apologizing for, but it felt insufficient whatever it was.

"I know, Michael..." Her own voice was laden with unshed tears. "Is it over? Are you back?"

"No," he gulped again. "I've just been called back. We got the last operative. We're going to get the names of the people in charge now. We're finally getting to the top of the pyramid."

Somehow it didn't feel as satisfying saying that as he had once thought it would. "How are my mom and Nate holding up, really?"

"Getting your mom to smoke outside has been the toughest part," she laughed, a shaky sound at best. "Nate has been... well, I supposed it's a good thing that I've got him under lock and key."

Michael could just imagine what his little brother's alcohol consumption would be under the circumstances.

"Actually, we've all been bonding over missing..." Fiona trailed off as she apparently realized what she was about to say.

"I've missed you, Fi..." he said in barely more than a whisper.

"Good," she answered simply. "Gives you another reason to come back in one piece, otherwise I'll have to kick your ass."

"Duly noted," and there was a trace of humor in his voice that didn't penetrate his heart very deeply.

"So, where are you? Or are you not allowed to tell me?" There was a definite edge of pique in her jibe.

"I'm with Sam at the loft. We're trying to figure out who broke into my mom's house and left another suggested scripture reading."

"Michael, you don't think-"

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "I've asked Lang—, I'll find out when I get back there."

"So you're going now?"

"I'm leaving Opa Locka in less than an hour."

"Well, that leaves out a goodbye kiss," Fiona responded in a resigned tone, which told Michael she was not anywhere in Dade County, which was more than he probably needed to know.

"Fi..."

"I know, Michael." She let out a heavy sigh and then asked wistfully, "Do you remember what it was like before it got so complicated?"

Silence floated between them like a still winter's morn back in Dublin and then she did something she'd never done except once. She started to sing, soft and low, so quietly that he had to strain to hear her.

"Rest tired eyes a while...Sweet is thy baby's smile. Angels are guarding and they watch o'er thee."

And, in that moment, he wasn't in Miami in the heat and the humidity, he was back in their small dingy, rundown but perfect little flat in Dublin, listening to her hum that tune repeatedly throughout their days together. _When she was cooking, when she was washing up, when she was cleaning guns or building a bomb, or doing any other activity that a Glenanne would consider domestic, she hummed that tune._

"Sleep, sleep, grah mo chree...Here on your mamma's knee. Angels are guarding and they watch o'er thee..."

 _He'd asked her about it one morning while she still thought his name was Michael McBride as he'd awaken to the sound of her actually singing the words in the shower instead of merely carrying the tune. Embarrassed by what she considered a poor singing voice, she'd refused to talk about it when he'd questioned her and his subsequent attempt to 'interrogate' her had rendered her momentarily incoherent and their ensuing love making had rendered the topic supremely unimportant._ _  
_  
"The birdeens sing a fluting song. They sing to thee the whole day long. Wee fairies dance o'er hill and the dale."

 _She'd finally confessed after much kissing, petting and pleading that it was what her mammy had sung to her and her sister every night as she'd brushed their hair out by the fire back on the farm._

 _He'd realized then, remembering the derelict ruin of a farmhouse where they had made love for the first time, she was sharing another piece of herself, a secret fragile part of her woman's heart that she showed to no one, shared with no one but him._

"For very love of thee..."

It was silent again for a long protracted moment. Neither of them could seem to find their voices and then she said simply, "Do what you have to do, Michael."

He couldn't make himself say anything, couldn't make himself do anything to break the spell or spoil the moment.

"Do what you have to do and come home to me. _We need you_. We all do."

And the line went dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _This is the second part of the 5.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 8 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward – Part 2**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Jupiter Island 2011_

Most people would have been thrilled to be lounging around a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood on Jupiter Island. The residence located at 165, nestled behind a large screen of sea grapes and saw palmettos, was not the biggest house on South Beach Road in Hobe Sound, but it was sufficiently grand for the two residents who were temporarily housed there. The third, however, had lived in palaces and five star hotels and was more concerned with its tactical security. Although she did appreciate its finer accouterments, her favorite two places in the world were by all accounts ramshackle dumps except for the company she kept there. Like the farm of her childhood, her dingy little flat in a less than desirable apartment block in Dublin and her drab little flat, which was a loft in an industrial building, were home.

The man who had made both of them home had been gone for seven months. She'd spent over half that time guarding over that man's family with the help of a cadre of Jojo Delaney's crewmen. Those men were mercenaries, they were loyal to a fault to her gunrunner friend and therefore to her. She couldn't risk using any of Marcus Dwyer's crew. If word got back to Ireland, even a whisper, before Michael was home permanently, the consequences would be grave. One young life had already been extinguished in this madness; the Irishwoman would not allow another to be a victim of this war.

Fiona Glenanne watched as Michael's mother paced around the long rectangular pool next to the guesthouse where she and Nate were staying. It had been a condition of the use of the house, not that she blamed the owners one bit for insisting that the chain smoking blonde and her "other" son stay out of the main house. The six man team guarding the residents took shifts occupying the other bedrooms in the part of the home that faced the large yard, which opened onto the beach and the ocean beyond.

As such, she was grateful that she'd been sitting in a chair with a view of Madeline on the patio deck when the phone call had come. Nate was nowhere to be seen, but she assumed he was still asleep this early in the morning. She couldn't sleep and for that she had been grateful, too. It had allowed her to answer the call on the first ring and no one else had heard it. Fiona was relieved to get some word from Sam on what was going on back in Miami. She hadn't expected to hear Michael's voice, but her heart had stopped momentarily when she had. The questions had tumbled from her lips in a rapid succession.

He'd sounded tired and over emotional for Michael. That gave her some small hope that there would a real homecoming for them in the future once this mess had been cleared away. She was disappointed he wasn't going to be around long enough for her to see him before he was carried away back to battle again and she felt very guilty about leaving Sam and Jesse alone back in Miami to handle that business.

But she had the more important job. She had to protect Michael's family, especially the family he didn't know he had yet. Looking down at the large, round bulge in her dressing gown where her lap used to be, it was hard not to blurt out the news while she had him on the phone. But she knew in her heart of hearts that no matter how badly she wanted to tell him, now was not the time. Michael didn't need the distraction of worrying about this, too. But she couldn't help being a little melancholy as their son pushed and stretched and kicked against her stomach, almost as if he knew his father was on the phone.

Rubbing against the movement inside, Fiona smiled to herself and hoped that she was keeping her emotions sufficiently masked. "I know, Michael." She let out a heavy sigh and then asked wistfully, "Do you remember what it was like before it got so complicated?"

She thought about that first Christmas they'd spent with her family back in Ireland, how her family had _almost_ accepted him as being acceptable for their daughter. She thought about her mammy's grand mansion, so unlike the house she was sitting in now, and she thought about her time on the farm…

Without conscious thought, she was singing that lullaby of her youth, caressing the child that was not yet here and not yet known by both his parents. That she was singing to his Da too was mere happenstance.

"For very love of thee..."

As she finished the song and realized belatedly what she'd done, it was silent again for a long protracted moment. Neither of them could seem to find their voices and then she said simply, "Do what you have to do, Michael." Fiona forced herself to remain calm and in control, especially after telling him that; him doing what he felt he had to do had gotten them into much of this mess.

"Do what you have to do and come home to me. _We need you_. We all do."

She had to hang up then. She would have told him or her voice would have given it away if she hadn't. As much as Fiona longed to hear his voice, she wasn't going to be able to stay composed and he was leaving in less than an hour anyway. There was no time to even drive back down south fast enough to be there before he had to leave, never mind give Michael the time he would need to process the news.

"Shhh, me wee darlin' babe," she whispered as she set the phone down and laid both hands on her expanded middle, feeling the movement underneath. "Yar Da'll be home soon…" And she fought back the tears, because no matter how quickly Michael came back, it would never be soon enough.

()()()()()

 _Miami 2011_

 _"Do what you have to do, Michael."_

" _Just be the unstoppable sonuvabitch I recruited all those years ago. Do what you have to do."_

His mandate had been clear from the two camps that mattered most at the moment, his family and his bosses. Do what he deemed necessary to end this, which he had done.

 _So, why was he cooling his heels in a DIA shrink's outer office waiting to see Dr. Anson Fullerton when he should be questioning Kessler?_ He didn't need any instructions on how to conduct an interrogation. _Hadn't he gotten Hector to talk when no one else could?_ He could still hear Tom Card's words from that lecture long ago and it had stuck just fine. _The biggest obstacle you can face in an interrogation is yourself. When your own feelings, your own anger, your own desire for revenge are all that stand between you and the information you want. The stronger your feelings are, the hotter your hate burns, the more important it is to set it aside._

Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat, eager to get back to work and stop wasting time. _Was that what this was about? Making sure he had himself under control before they would entrust him with the task of wiping out the rest of that unauthorized quasi-governmental agency that had burned him and ruined his life?_

Raines had pulled him off Hector's interrogation and then suddenly had brought him back in less than 24 hours. When he confronted him about it, all his former recruiter would say was that the order had come from higher up that Agency personnel were to take the lead on the former spy's examination, _as if one burned spy wasn't capable of cracking another._ It was because he understood exactly where Hector was coming from that Michael had been able to get the information from him. Raines had apparently gone against someone's directive in bringing him back and hadn't wasted any time letting the dark haired man know it.

" _I don't need to remind you, I went out on a hell of a limb bringing you back in."_

But, as usual with the Agency, no one questioned him too much as long as he was getting results. He'd gotten results sitting in that room with Hector… He'd gotten results in Venezuela capturing Kessler…

" _Kessler's dug in. We're going need a team. Oh, and one more thing I want to bring my people."_

" _Your people, what people? You mean that ex-SEAL and your girlfriend?"_

" _No, not the ex-SEAL and my girlfriend, they're too busy protecting my family, no thanks to the agency, and I know you, Raines. You're going to insist on someone with security clearance. Jesse Porter was with CIFA. He's dealt with the organization first-hand the same as I have and he knows which agents are qualified to lead this assault."_ What he'd meant was that Jesse would know which agents they could trust not to betray them in the field. _"Max will have his team there. If you want my help, I want my team."_

" _You know, I forgot what a pain in the ass you could be, Westen."_

An effective, well-worth-it pain in the ass, as it turned out. He, Jesse and Agent Kimberly Danielle Pearce had proven that, especially since the extraction that had gone south and they had still succeeded in nabbing Señor Kessler with nothing more than ingenuity, loads of hardware and Michael's _failure is not an option_ attitude.

" _He was the head of operations. He planned every project that made my life hell for the last four years. I'd like to put those years behind me, but I have a few questions, questions only he can answer. So trust me—I wanna talk to him more than you can possibly imagine."_

And there was no way that man was slipping through his fingers.

And he hadn't.

Dani Pearce had been an acquaintance of Jesse's from his DC days before being transferred to Miami, or so he had said. Watching the two of them work together had convinced Michael of three things. First, they worked as a team, which meant they had been on other ops. Second, they were more than professionally acquainted. They knew each other's moves on an intimate level. It was odd to watch it from the outside instead of experiencing it, working with Fiona. Michael supposed he now had some inkling of what it had been like for Jesse being the third wheel in a room that had only been big enough for two.

And now Mr Westen understood why Mr Porter had been so circumspect about the level of their association. While Jesse no longer had a government position to protect, Pearce did. The higher up's frowned on that type of inter-agency relations. Finally, as it turned out, Michael had more in common with Dani than he had first known. The slender dark haired woman had a history that both fascinated and distracted him.

Agent Pearce was one of the most dedicated, nose-to-the-grindstone, by-the-book agents he had come across in quite a while. Michael had admired her integrity and tenacity on the job and her ability to compartmentalize when around Mr Porter off the job. So, he was somewhat shocked when Jesse had let him know that she hadn't always been like that. She had been ready to quit the Agency to marry her asset turned fiancé, but the aforementioned Jay Tunberg had not lived long enough for that to happen.

That knowledge had disturbed Michael on many levels as he had lain awake that first night, having volunteered to take the couch and let the other couple have the bed inside the suite. Sleeping with Jesse or anywhere near the big man's snoring was not on his "to do" list and he'd considered it paying it forward in a sense. Back in Miami, it would be Fiona and he that would get the private room on jobs while Sam and or Jesse would be the ones relegated to the couches and tolerating each other's nocturnal noise. A wave of homesickness like he'd never known before had come attached to that thought.

The dark haired man got up and began to circle the reception area of the DIA office, shaking off his reverie before it could take him to places he didn't want to go right then. It was hard enough keeping his mind off Fiona without the obvious comparisons to Pearce's situation and his own. _Was pissing him off by making him wait and wasting his time part of the evaluation?_ It seemed likely, another idiotic test to see how he handled the real stress… Once upon a time, when he had been another man, this would not have bothered him because he would have ensured that whoever would have paid a price for it.

Michael gazed out the window at the streets of his home town, bathed in reds and oranges as the sun was setting behind him, but reflecting off the glass of the concrete behemoths that comprised much of down town Miami. He continued to stare, simultaneously wondering where Fiona was and why he was being debriefed here when Kessler was sitting in a black site awaiting his attention. _Another request from someone "higher up" meant to derail the investigation?_ There was only so much bureaucratic idiocy that could be reasonably blamed for this happening. The covert operative didn't believe in coincidences this frequently in his line of work, which meant that they had been only partially right in their assessment of Kessler's role in the organization.

 _Hard to believe he managed to assemble so many operations and stay so off the radar, but he pulled it off... the last one… Yeah, we get him, we get everything. Not the mealy-mouth, "I followed orders" BS we got from all the other guys. Kessler got his hands dirty on every spy they burned, every op they pulled – all of it._

It wasn't hard to believe that the man was the operations officer, given everything that had to be done to extract him from his compound near Caracas. But that just meant he was the last one in the wild, as Raines had said. That didn't mean that he was ultimately the one _giving_ all the orders. He couldn't see Management working for anyone, never mind their target. No, Kessler was just the one seeing them executed, just as Cowan had done before his untimely death on that parking garage four years ago. Michael's hand subconsciously drifted to his cheek, remembering the face full of blood he'd been splattered with.

Mr Westen thought again about how they had gone to all the trouble to recruit Commandante Armando Puente, a Venezuelan colonel trained in Cuba by Soviets in the late 80's and therefore open to an approach by an "FSB officer," to help extract the American. So, how was it that as soon as Puente had approached the vehicle, suddenly Kessler had known they were onto him and had shot the Colonel and then employed scanners and jammers to derail the extraction? _No, that dog just didn't hunt_ as his great uncle had been fond of pointing out.

Michael thought about Max's willingness to just give up when the cameras and the radios had mysteriously shut down. A cell phone call from Jesse had confirmed that things had gone badly and the burned spy had wished again for the millionth time that Sam and Fiona, as much as he'd wanted them out of harm's way, were with him backing him up. As Agent Grant had enumerated all the things they didn't have, Michael had finally given him a _welcome to my world_ speech and barreled after the fleeing COO of the organization, crashing through the gates of the compound. The dark haired man had found it difficult to concentrate on the capture of Kessler when he had to wonder whether his CIA contact was just too by the book to improvise or the man was one of them.

It had been even more difficult to decide whether or not to abandon the near fatally wounded Max Grant in favor of fleeing with the wounded Kessler, who had left himself vulnerable whilst shooting said agent in the back and Michael had been able to get the drop on the bastard from behind before he could blockade himself in his reinforced steel safe room.

Peering into that treasure trove of answers, it had been all Michael could do to tear himself away his prisoner to check on his fallen comrade in arms. It had killed him that he was going to have to leave all the information behind, shelves and shelves of secret data that would never see the light of a CIA analyst's room, because someone would be arriving to literally kill them any second now. The wail of the police sirens and his knowledge of Kessler's connections in local government had sent him scrambling for a solution.

It had been with no small amount of relief that Agent Pearce and Mr Porter had arrived on the scene in one of the multitude of Hummers belonging to their target and had helped hustle them away before la policia had arrived and they were all staring at the walls of a Venezuelan prison with little hope of future freedom. But it had not been without regret that their sole prize was a man determined to kill himself before he could talk.

Thinking about Jesse and Dani left him thinking about Fiona again. He wanted to speak to her again so badly, but didn't dare call within the confines of a CIA operated building. After that little fiasco in Caracas, his paranoia level had gone off the charts and being forced to submit to a DIA examination just told him in no uncertain terms that someone in the Company was trying to keep him from getting answers.

"Mr Westen, a pleasure to meet you at last," said the bespectacled older man with a thick blonde mustache and waves of tufted matching hair.

"Dr Fullerton," he acknowledged as he turned towards the man approaching him and his outstretched hand. The man had some deeply etched lines on his face and eyebrows with an almost devilish upsweep.

"Come in, please, Michael. May I call you Michael? I find last names to be so formal and such a barrier to developing a relationship," the man blathered on as he shook Mr Westen's hand a little too long.

 _Relationship, not damned likely._ The younger man flashed his best toothy grin and extracted his limb as quickly as possible. "Of course, whatever helps resolve this quickly," he returned. _He could play this game, too; he just had no patience for it right now._ "Why am I here exactly?"

Anson settled behind his desk and gestured for the other man to take the seat opposite. "Just standard procedure," he assured him blithely.

"Standard procedure?" Michael echoed. "I don't recall…"

"Oh, please forgive me. I'd forgotten that you were no longer an active agent. Your profile is quite fascinating, you know. I helped write a large portion of it when you came over from the Rangers. Your career has been most impressive, Michael. I've followed it and, well, of course, you with great interest."

"Uh, thank you?"

"Oh, yes, yes, I'm sorry. As I was saying, when an operation involves the near fatality of a senior agent while working with a civilian intelligence asset, especially a former agent such as yourself, burned I believe is the term, then an evaluation is mandatory." He smiled a toothy grin of his own that was smarmy at best and set Michael's teeth on edge. It was almost as if he was challenging him to argue.

"How thoughtless of me, you've never had Agency protocols applied to you in this manner before, have you? They just want to make sure that you're properly debriefed. You've been in the field a long time with this operation, not to mention those years you were fighting this all on your own after they had turned their backs on you. I'm sure that was very frustrating for you, Michael, to have all your hard work and loyalty dismissed like that."

"I've had better days," he returned neutrally.

"Yes, I've sure you have. I'm sure you're finding this appointment rather frustrating as well. I know talking to me when you'd rather be moving the investigation forward…." Dr Fullerton trailed off as he glanced down and flipped through some papers in the folder in front of him. "You always managed to cut through the red tape when you were working with Agent Sizemore, didn't you?"

"What's does this have to do with Larry?" Michael mentally kicked himself for the slip, jet lag and sleep deprivation no doubt. Maybe he did need to take a break, but he just couldn't, not now, not yet.

"Nothing, nothing at all, Michael, just an observation," Anson deflected as he smiled that creepy grin. "Shall we begin? We have a lot of ground to cover."

()()()()()()

 _Jupiter Island, 2011_

"Jesus, Ma, would you just leave Fiona alone? Can't you see she's got enough problems of her own with us hanging around?"

It was the first thing Nate Westen had said in days and Ms Glenanne couldn't help but be grateful for his intervention. She used to wonder why Michael had run away to the other side of the world at seventeen.

Now she knew.

She watched with sorrowful eyes as Michael's younger brother had turned his attention back to the huge flat screen television with stereo surround sound that dominated the living room wall of the main house and poured himself another drink. The Irishwoman wanted to say something, either in gratitude or consolation, but she didn't have the words right now.

Madeline left in a huff with her cigarettes and headed for the pool deck. Fiona took her place in the deep lounge chair next to the couch and sank into it with a heavy sigh.

"She means well," her son observed blandly.

"I know," she agreed. "I know she does, but sometimes-"

"Yeah," Nate concurred before knocking back another shot of whiskey.

Mrs Westen was used to coming and going as she pleased. The constant emptiness of her home after decades of noise, a large portion of it unpleasant, had left Michael's mother in the habit of heading out the front door often. As much as she griped about having Michael and his friends around, and occasionally his enemies, she was happy for the company. Nate's presence over the years had usually been dictated by how much he owed to whom and whether or not they were aware of his mother's address. Once her baby boy had moved to Las Vegas, Madeline was even happier to have her older son and his friends around.

Fiona understood her frustration, vividly remembering the three days she had spent with her Auntie Jeannie in her eldest brother's shell of a house awaiting word on Claire's killer. She had been climbing the walls when she'd gotten a phone call from Val Temple, the local PIRA shot caller who had wanted to speak to the head of the Glenanne family, and had used it as an excuse to see what Liam was up to. She was never going to un-hear what she had heard or be able to purge those images from her mind. Sometimes, there were rules for a reason, much as she was loath to admit it. Nate had already been ambushed at the cost of his son's life. There was no way in hell she was taking a similar chance with her son... Michael's son... _their_ son...

Fiona wiped away a tear with the back of her hand before the younger man could see it.

It wasn't bad enough that they _couldn't_ go baby stuff shopping like Michael's mother wanted to, as if Fiona would risk being seen in public at this junction with his enemies circling, but it was just plain wrong to do so. Besides needing to be able to move at a moment's notice and not needing to lug all those as of yet unnecessary things around, it would have hardly been conducive to making her other son comfortable considering that he had now lost the opportunity to be a father for the time being _and_ being around his older brother's pregnant girlfriend was surely enough of a painful reminder. She loved Madeline dearly, but sometimes the woman was SO dense!

Besides which, it simply wasn't done back home. Proper Irish Catholic families did not buy any of those things until just before the baby was born. The crib wasn't even put up until after the child was safely delivered. She'd done so many things against what her family would have considered right and decent that she was not going to bend on that topic, particularly since she had so many overwhelmingly practical reasons not to give in.

In any event, dealing with Madeline Westen's objections was the least of her worries right now. Jojo's team had been finding things that were making her extremely nervous: cigarette butts and water bottles outside, camera lens caps on the ground, damaged security cameras. They could be signs that their safe house had been compromised or it could be someone trying to flush them out into the open. She was oh so tempted right about now to take the bottle away from Nate for not merely his own good, but her own consumption as well.

Ms Glenanne was beginning to have some measure of sympathy for Michael when it came to not having to deal with civilians in tactical situations, though she was still pissed at him for cutting her and Sam out of the picture over and over. They may not have been _agency approved_ , but they were equal or better to anything the Company had produced. This time, however, she'd had no choice but to circle the wagons and sit this one out.

Something more important than being by Michael Westen's side had come into her life and the needs of his son outweighed the needs of the man himself. _Bloody good thing what Michael wants and what I need... what_ we all _need... are actually the same fecking thing for once,_ she thought bitterly.

With that in mind, Fiona picked up the burner phone and called Sam to let him know they were headed to the new safe house, the one in western Broward County that no one else knew about. It was a risk being the only one who knew the location, but it would keep anyone else from betraying their secret.

After enduring Madeline's endless complaints and Nate's boozy clumsiness as they had packed up their things and made ready to leave under cover of darkness, the former IRA operative could have probably been forgiven for not taking into account that the road from their current location was one way in and one way out and not immediately catching the one man construction crew setting up barricades as a threat. But, by the time the lead vehicle had exploded from a blast buried in the road and flipped on its roof, it was too late.

The body guards had opened fire in an attempt to kill whoever might be approaching their large black SUV, but Fiona realized belatedly once again that they had been suckered into opening the windows and effectively giving their assailant exactly what they needed to launch a flash bang followed by a gas grenade into the vehicle.

One of Jojo's men had covered her body with his own and taken the worst of the first blast. The last thing she remembered was tears of frustration that she couldn't move the man who'd saved her in time to bend over and throw the smoking object back out of the vehicle.

()()()()()()()

 _Miami, 2011_

The first thing Michael noticed after he had exited that office building and headed over towards the adjoining skyscraper was that he couldn't overcome the feeling of needing a shower that had nothing to do with the relative humidity of Miami. Spending two hours trying to fend off Dr Fullerton had been one of the most exhausting things he had ever done. It was worse than spending time with his mother's various therapists. At least they weren't as well informed as the good doctor appeared to be. The man's obsession with why Michael had joined the Agency as well as his progress with the investigation of the rogue organization that ruined his life had troubled Mr Westen deeply.

He didn't have much time to contemplate further how badly Anson Fullerton had left his head spinning. Raines had immediately grabbed him, followed by the dark haired woman who had accompanied him to Venezuela, to bring them both up to speed on the next 'debriefing' session with Mr Kessler. Because of the sensitive nature of the conversation, he'd been forced to turn his phone off and that rubbed against the grain mightily.

Pearce and Porter would be joining Westen at the site, but only the actual CIA agent would be traveling directly to the black hole in which they had dropped their prisoner. Jesse and Michael would be taking circumspect routes in order to throw anyone following off the trail as well as get an idea of who might be following. Only Raines knew the routes because he had arranged the travel personally in an effort to keep the various dogs off the scent.

It had taken up the rest of the day and into the evening going over how and where the former CIFA employee would receive his travel orders and what Mr Westen was supposed to do to keep up the charade. But first on Michael's agenda was to get fresh clothes before he headed off around the world again. So he had gone quickly out to the parking lot and into the night air and then settled swiftly into the Charger. But before he could turn the ignition key, the spy's phone lit up like an old fashioned switchboard. Texts and calls from Sam had accumulated while he had been incommunicado.

The first set of texts advising him that the cargo was going to be transferred from the Hialeah warehouse to the one in Kendell were mildly concerning, but far from alarming. Fiona could have decided to change locations for any number of reasons, though knowing his girlfriend as he did, she wouldn't have done it without a good tactical reason. Then the encoded voice mails had grown more frantic as Michael had listened to them whilst driving towards the loft. The convey that had been moving his mother, brother and, most importantly, his girlfriend had been attacked before they'd gotten more than a few blocks from their last location. The final message came as he was out of the car, getting ready to open the gates. Sam was on his way to collect Madeline and Nate, but Fiona had been taken.

Michael froze, momentarily unable to process the information given. Sam's voice had been beyond tense, but he had done the right thing. The other Westens who were hiding out in a hotel were probably not going to be bothered since they hadn't been taken in the initial attack, but that didn't mean someone wouldn't be back for them once they had secured their primary target.

He hadn't yet turned to get back into the black muscle car when he felt the barrel of a .9 mm press into his neck, followed by someone reaching up under his jacket and into his waistband to remove his own weapon. Michael drew a deep breath and tried to remain calm. The fact he hadn't been shot immediately meant whoever had gotten the drop on him wanted to chat more than they wanted to kill him.

"What's a matter, kid? No hello for your old buddy?"

Michael let out the breath he was holding on a long sigh. "What are you doing here, Lare?"

"Just dropped by with a little business proposition. Why don't we go back to your place and we'll talk about it."

"I'm kinda tied up right now," the younger man countered. "Maybe we could talk about it next week?"

Larry chuckled, not a pleasant sound. "oh, I think you're going to want to hear what I have to say, kid. In fact, I'm willing to bet the life of my new... uh, kidnap... er... kidnap-ee that you're going to want to hear what I have to say. Now get going!"

Mr Westen opened the gates, slowly moving through the metal barrier in almost a daze. Had his former mentor actually succeeded in not only finding, but taking, Fiona? As he started to turn back around, Mr Sizemore struck his former protégée across the face with his own gun.

As Michael rose shakily to his feet, Larry grabbed him by his lapels and pressed the SIG into his throat, almost choking him with it.

"I've always looked on you as a son," the older man confessed. "But that ended when you sent me to prison. So, if you don't want to get shot in the neck you do what I say and then you cross your fingers."

Michael saw the cold fire blazing in those ice blue eyes. He had seen if before, though it had _very rarely_ been sent in his direction. _It meant only one thing._

"Because daddy is in one of those moods."

 _Larry Sizemore was in killing mode._


	3. Chapter 3

**_A/N:_** **A/N:** _This is the third part of the 5.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 9 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward – Part 3**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2011_

 _Covert operative is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Like soldiers, ER doctors and astronauts, spies have to schedule extended downtime for decompression. Carry that stress to long and it's easy to start missing details._

 _Which leads to things like letting your psychopathic ex-partner who's supposed to have been extradited to an Albanian prison get the drop on you and possibly kidnap your girlfriend…._

Michael wasn't sure for a split second what was more frightening, the fact that Larry Sizemore had a gun to his neck or the possibility that he cared enough for Fiona to do anything the man wanted.

 _First things first…._

"Okay, Lare, you win." Michael plastered his charming smile on his face. "What's the job?"

His former mentor continued to stare, as if trying to kill him with the intensity of his gaze, which was kind of redundant considering he had a SIG Sauer pressing into his windpipe. Slowly, a matching toothy grin spread over the older man's face as he released his grip on his one-time protégé and stepped back a few paces. "That's more like it, Kid; now gimme your phone."

Mr Westen reached into his pocket slowly and handed the device to Mr Sizemore carefully, who then started backing towards the green Jaguar that was parked in the gloom near the loft stairs. Michael debated whether or not to be grateful that Sam had not been there whenever Larry must have arrived. There was no love lost between the two men, though in his new military mode Sam might have made short work of the supposedly dead spy.

"Okay, lose the knives, too, and don't tell me you're not carrying. You forget who you're talking to."

Larry took a moment to admire the two blades he'd just been handed before stuffing them in his jacket pocket and getting back to business.

"Okay, Kid, here's the deal, you're going to help me break into a CIA black site prison and -"

"That sounds like a fun way to earn yourself a free trip to a much more secure penitentiary."

"Same old Michael, always such a pessimist, I've got this all worked out. See, Michael, I brought along some help." Larry popped the trunk open and the younger man was utterly relieved to discern that the unlucky occupant was not in fact Fiona. It took another moment to process the sight of who was actually stuffed in the minuscule space in the rear of the sports car, causing complete puzzlement as the older man hauled a bound and gagged Anson Fullerton out of the trunk.

"I believe you two know each other already because I happen to know that _you_ , my friend, took a break in the middle of an operation today to have a long heart to heart with this government approved head shrink. And since I know you were never one for meds and happy talk, I'm guessing you two had something else to talk about."

Michael looked at the DIA psychologist with a furrowed brow. That he'd been dragged into the man's office in the middle of an op was true, but he couldn't imagine that anything he'd discussed with Fullerton would interest Larry.

" _You always managed to cut through the red tape when you were working with Agent Sizemore, didn't you?"_

" _What's does this have to do with Larry?"_

" _Nothing, nothing at all, Michael, just an observation..."_

The covert operative stared harder at the rumpled blonde man, who was busy rearranging his jacket. It seemed like way too much of a coincidence. But he had bigger problems to ponder at the moment, such as if Larry hadn't taken Fiona, who had? And why did the formerly impeccably groomed doctor suddenly seem to have gained ten pounds around the middle?

"You like that, Kid? You know, I was never one for explosives; that was always your department. But I _can_ improvise when the situation calls for it. Go ahead, Doc, show him your new vest," he beamed.

Anson looked at Michael with a pleading expression before he pulled off the beige jacket he was wearing. Mr Westen belatedly realized that it was the same suit the man had had on that afternoon. Larry must have taken him sometime after their meeting earlier today.

"What can I say? I just get better with age. But it was really helpful of you to leave all that C-4 lying around upstairs. Or is it Fiona I should be thanking?" Mr Sizemore chuckled.

Michael couldn't take his eyes off the complex arrangement of C-4 and wiring stuffed inside the man's vest. It wasn't as intricate as either of them would have done, but it was serviceable and all the more dangerous for its lack of sophistication. The only moment in the whole mess was that the dark haired spy was now absolutely positive Larry'd had nothing to do with Fiona's disappearance or the forays into his mother's house or surveillance equipment that had been left in the attic.

"Okay, how does this help us break into a CIA black site? They'll put a bullet in his head before we can get close enough to the building to detonate it."

Anson gave him a startled look, which Michael ignored. He was concentrating on the armed ghost who was grinning broadly, but the malice alight in his pale blue eyes was discernible, even in the darkness.

"It's called motivation, Michael. You remember how that goes, right? The way we used to motivate people to help us get what we wanted? Well, I want you to take me to whatever black site they'll be holding that guy you bagged in Venezuela, what was his name? Kessler? I have it on good authority," and he reached out and poked Anson in the shoulder with the barrel of his gun, "That he's on his way to have a conversation with you."

The spy looked quickly between the sheepish DIA shrink and the armed lunatic and tried to put together how much Anson could have told Larry about the classified details of Kessler's capture. Raines had been right to suspect a leak in the Agency _. There was every possibility he was looking at it right now._

 _Or it was equally possible that Mr Sizemore had persuaded Dr Fullerton to spill his guts before Larry did it for him in the most literal sense of the word._

"Still waiting to hear how this," and he waved his hand in the general direction of the man wearing an explosive vest, "is going to help us get into a black site with one of their highest priority prisoner's..."

"That is my insurance policy. You are gonna do what I say tonight and I say, let's go! Our friend here has already told me you know where my new kidnap-ee, Mr Kessler, is going to be in the next few hours. "

"Look, Larry, even if I had the location of the site, still I'm burned, remember? I don't have the clearances to get by the—"

"Oh, Jesus, you know what, Kid? You are really starting to piss the boss off," Larry declared in a dangerously low voice, pointing the handgun right between his former colleague's cobalt blue eyes. "And getting fired around here is a _real_ bitch. Now, you...back in the trunk." He didn't take his eyes off the younger man, merely checking in his peripheral vision to see whether or not Anson had obeyed.

As soon as Fullerton was back inside, Mr Sizemore slammed the trunk lid with his free hand and waved Michael towards the driver's seat with his weapon. As he walked past, his former mentor grabbed him tightly by the bicep and pressed the muzzle of his handgun into his skull just behind his left ear.

"Understand something, Michael, there's a couple million dollars waiting to be deposited in my account when Mr Kessler is back with his _friends_. So I might have let you skate a few times in the past just because of old time's sake, but if this doesn't go right, there's going to be a new job opening in the DIA and a whole new meaning to burned spy."

()()()()()

 _Overtown 2011_

Her head pounded and her nose, throat and lungs all burned. She gasped in a breath and, as soon as she became marginally aware of her surroundings, her hands were flying to her stomach to assess the condition of her son. After a few minutes of soothing and probing, she was satisfied short of a hospital visit, which would be upcoming very soon she hoped, that her child was all right.

The next thing she noticed was that the dark room had only the small, metal framed bed with a reasonably thick mattress upon which she was lying. It could have been in an apartment or it could have been a storage room. There was a single metal door set in the wall directly opposite where the bed sat in the corner. She slowly tried to sit upright and found it way more difficult than it should have been.

"I apologize for the accommodations, but they're temporary," a muffled voice announced from the other side of the door. "Best I could do on short notice."

"Who are you? Why am I here?"

"Let's skip that for now. As to why—"

"Where are they?" she interrupted. "What have you done—"

"Michael's family is fine," the voice cut her off in turn, knowing immediately what she was asking. "You were the higher priority."

"Priority?" she echoed. "What's going on?"

"You're here because I need to you to talk some sense into Michael, let him know we're on the same side, that we have the same goal."

"You have a funny way of showing it," Fiona countered.

"No, not really, I think saving you from being kidnapped is a pretty good start."

"Then you didn't—"

"Oh, no, that was me. I had to make my move before the others did. See, I've been keeping a watch on all of Michael's family for him. He's getting close to finishing off the people that burned us and I didn't want him getting distracted from what he was doing."

"Well, if you're so damned noble, then show yourself and stop playing at whatever game you're about," the Irishwoman challenged.

"Games can be fun," he laughed lightly as he opened the door. "Depends on what you're playing." The figure was silhouetted in the door frame, the light shining from behind making it hard to see his features.

"What do you want from me?" Now that he was in the room, the voice sounded vaguely familiar and it disturbed her at some deep instinctive level.

"Are your ears still ringing?" he asked and cocked his head, a gesture of Michael's which would have indicated frustration for the spy, but it seemed to have no emotional resonance with this man. "I told you, I want you to explain to Michael that we're on the same side and I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, if he is. I want to help him finish taking down the organization that burned us. If we hurry, we can take out two of the shot callers with one hit and save Michael, too."

"Save Michael?" she gulped. "What's happened to him?"

"He's walking into a trap and I need you to help me convince him to trust me."

A light snapped on overhead, blinding her momentary. As her vision cleared, she couldn't help the startled inhalation of breath as the identity of her captor was finally revealed.

"You!"

"Yeah, me..." Mr Escher agreed pleasantly. "I guess this is going to be harder than I thought, given our past history. Seems I have to convince you first." Simon extended his open hand. "Let's go for a ride. We wouldn't want to keep Michael waiting. It could prove fatal."

Fiona's head swam, but she couldn't not go, not if there was a possibility he was telling the truth and Michael needed her help. She couldn't exactly sit around while the father of her child was killed and not cooperating with the man who held her captive was equally dangerous.

If he'd wanted to kill her or harm her, the tall man with the short cropped hair and wild eyes had already had plenty of opportunity to do so. She would have to play along and hope there was either a chance to escape or an opportunity for Michael to kill the madman offering her a hand up off the bed if that proved necessary.

()()()()()()()()()()()

 _Opa Locka 2011_

Michael's mind was racing as fast as the green Jaguar he was driving through the pre-dawn streets towards Opa Locka Aiport and the CIA hangar cum offices with warehouse space located there. Larry had run over his cell phone with the car as they had left the loft and there was still the matter of the detonator the man held in his breast pocket. Worse yet, somehow, Dr Fullerton had gotten some, but not all, of the plans Raines had laid out for him and then had passed those onto his ex-partner.

He was supposed to meet a plane there that would take him from South Florida to the black site where Kessler was being held via a circuitous route which involved loads of plane changes and dead drops. He had to assume that Jesse was already on his way there as the tall man had left for DC straight away after the meeting with Raines. But his former recruiter had nailed it when he had deliberately let it be known that Michael would be meeting the plane that would be bringing Kessler to Miami instead of the flight taking the covert operative away to their secure site where he would be the one asking the questions. _So Raines had been right._ There was a leak, but was Fullerton the source or merely someone who'd had their professional confidential compromised by a blade to the throat? _Larry could be very persuasive._

"Cheer up, kid, soon this'll all be over," Mr Sizemore advised as the vehicle approached the undercover hangar. "Yea, it's kind of intimidating huh?" he added as they spotted the two guards approaching where they had parked. "But we do this right, we'll go through there like a hot knife through butter and, hey, you know how I like a hot knife." Larry's good humor was back for the moment.

"There's no need for knives, hot or cold. Let me handle this," Michael requested, slipping out of the vehicle with his former partner hot on his heels.

"Good evening, gentlemen, no need for excitement," he said as he approached the pair dressed in airport security uniforms. Their weapons and their earpieces betrayed their identities as not being just rent-a-cops. "Reaching... for... my... identification..." he dragged the words out as he reached towards his jacket with exaggerated slowness.

After a brief consultation with his ID and their earpieces, the taller of the two nodded. "They're expecting you, Mr Westen. Who's this?"

"He's with me. Top secret clearance."

"Yeah," Larry agreed, smiling broadly at the duo. "I could tell you, _but then I'd have to kill you."_

"This way," returned the shorter guard with a sour expression. Obviously he'd heard that lame joke more than once, not realizing just how true it was in this particular case. They sandwiched the newcomers between them as they escorted the two men in designer suits around the building to front of the hangar. Michael knew there would be two more men and tried to figure out how to contain the casual violence that was Larry Sizemore and subdue all four of the CIA personnel without bloodshed. _Taking out six spetsnaz operatives had been easy by comparison. He'd only needed one of them alive..._

Michael shuttered and remembered why he avoided all contact with his old partner. The places his mind drifted to just _thinking_ about Larry, never mind being in his homicidal presence, was not the kind of distraction he needed right now.

()()()()()()

 _Miami 2011_

Sam Axe had had one helluva day and the night wasn't going much better.

He had just returned from picking up Maddie and Nate and trying to hand them off to a CIA team that was supposed to be taking them into protective custody. But Michael's mother had fussed and protested until the former SEAL had finally acquiesced and let the pair return to Madeline's home. There was more than enough security personnel there from SecuriCorp, in addition to the local law enforcement that was on the Agency ordered protective detail. Mrs Westen just wanted to relax and have a smoke on her own couch.

Nate pretty much didn't care what happened as long as he got a bottle to go with it. So while he was quietly getting plastered in the living room, his mother was not so quietly interrogating all the people she could lay her hands on, including Jesse's tech expert, until her youngest son put a stop to it rather abruptly.

Sam left at that point. His subsequent call to Michael went straight to voice mail again.

The ex-SEAL arrived back at the loft in time to notice that someone else was occupying his parking space. He kept driving and parked in the valet line for the club. Slipping quietly from the Cadillac with his trusty set of binoculars, he set up on the adjacent rooftop. The older man was attempting to peer in the windows when he observed his arch nemesis, Larry Sizemore, escorting some poor unfortunate soul down the stairs bound and gagged and subsequently stuffing him into the trunk of the small sports coupe he had observed earlier.

Sam cursed as he looked at his phone and realized with all the recent excitement that he had forgotten to charge the battery. There was no help for it until he got back in the Cadillac.

By the time Mr Axe had hurried back to his car and retrieved it, he'd arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of Michael closing the gates and then getting into the said vehicle and driving away. He rightly ascertained that Larry was using whoever that was in the trunk to keep Michael in line. Although grateful it wasn't Fiona in the trunk, especially in her condition, it still left the question as to where she was and who had her, as it could still be Larry, or more accurately Larry's accomplice, whomever that might be.

Something else disturbed Sam and, after a moment's contemplation, he realized that the awkward bulges in the man's vest were most likely from a explosive materials. He cursed again for leaving Larry the time and the plastique necessary to construct something that would keep Michael from just shooting the cold blooded sonuvabitch at his earliest opportunity. As much as he wanted to search for Fiona, sticking with Mike was the priority at the moment.

He kept his distance, but kept them in sight all the same. Jesse had let him know that the diminutive Asian genius had not only discovered that Madeline's house had been covered in chemical tracers, but had also come up with a way for them to use the substances' signals too. He tried calling Jesse, as well as the CIA agent the younger man was so fond of with no results. Sam wasn't sure who else he could call at the Agency who would talk to him.

Following at a respectable distance for the trip across town, the GPS equipment led him to his target directly and soon the naval man pulled up across the parking lot from the black site hangar where he assumed Mike's flight would be leaving from. He watched while his friend and his enemy were escorted towards the front of the building by security and knew he had only a small window of opportunity to free the man in the trunk while everyone would be too busy dealing with the assault that was about to take place inside the hangar.

()()()()()()

 _Opa Locka 2011_

"How do you know where they are?" Fiona queried as the big black SUV flew from the abandoned office building in Overtown where she'd been 'staying' towards Opa Locka Airport.

"When Michael was in town last, I left a little present for him at his mother's house. The Bible on the dining room table and the surveillance equipment in the attic both had chemical tags on them. This ain't my first rodeo. I've been tracking him ever since," he announced as he checked over the machine pistol.

Ms Glenanne thought back to the night her wayward lover had first called her. Between that and what Sam had told her, she was surprised it had taken the madman this long to find her. The sophistication and the amount of resources Simon seemingly had at his disposal was truly frightening and it made her even more suspicious of him than she had been to start with. Her son seemed to concur with her opinion, as the baby reacted to her distress by pummelling her spine with pushes and kicks that had her clenching her teeth periodically.

"Why are you helping me? Helping us?" she demanded when she could breathe again.

"We might have had our differences in the past, but I'd work with the devil himself to take down the men that burned us," Mr. Escher explained congenially.  
"Fortunately, Michael has been far more helpful. He captured Mr. Kessler, who was the one handing out orders. Then he arranged that prisoner transfer so I could have some quality time with Mr. Anderson. It helped me to convince the man in charge that I would be more useful out of the box, helping to take down the rest of the organization, than locked away in a cage letting my talents go to waste."

"You're working directly for the CIA?" she stammered. Now, all the high dollar equipment and expensive tracking methods made sense and it make her sick. It was all she could do to concentrate on her driving and ensure that she was making the turns in concert with the GPS system.

"Off the books, of course," he grinned and it was totally unsettling. "They drop me into the hot spots where they don't want to get their hands dirty," he replied in the same haunted monotone that marked his every word. "The man seems to think he's got me on a tight leash, but I've been spending my free time making sure that the organization doesn't get their hands on Michael's family. Can't have him distracted from his mission, now can we?" Simon offered her a small smile.

"So, the CIA just let you out of prison after -" She stopped herself before she could say something that would upset him, though the large man seemed in a perfectly equitable mood.

"That's how it is when you're a useful weapon; someone is always going to want to take you out the holster and use you."

"You must have powerful friends in awfully high places," Fiona remarked casually, hoping he might drop a name or two.

The man shrugged as he continued to stare out the wind shield. "It's been very rewarding to work with Chief Card," Mr. Escher returned blandly. "He appreciates a job well done."

The not so petite Irishwoman fell back against the seat and tried to retain her composure, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles ached. Wasn't that the name of the man who'd pulled Michael out of Ireland all those years ago? And he had _this monster_ on his payroll? Tom Card was a bigger bastard than she had ever imagined!

She couldn't get to the airport fast enough.

()()()()()()()()()()

"Alright, buddy, take a minute and catch your breath, but don't take too long."

Sam put down the crowbar he'd used to open the trunk and pulled the hyperventilating Anson Fullerton out of the small, enclosed and almost airless space. The redness of the man's face contrasted starkly with his blonde dishevelled hair.

"Aw, dammit," he sighed once he had the man upright and could see the details of the plastique that were contained within his beige vest. "Man, I wish Tinkerbelle were here..." He knew a good bit about explosive ordinance, but he was rather uncomfortable risking both their lives in an attempt to disarm the device and he had a pretty good idea of who was holding the detonator.

As if in answer to his request, a black SUV pulled alongside him while he was pulling the duct tape off of the not-so-good doctor's mouth. Sam closed the distance in two long strides, completely ignoring the other man in his hurry to greet the face smiling out the Navy man through the open window.

Mr Axe got so carried away in fact that he reached through the window and hugged her with one muscular arm. "Damn, lady, you sure are a sight for sore eyes! How did you get away?"

Surprisingly, Fiona didn't release him as he'd moved to back away from the vehicle. Keeping him pulled part of the way into the window, she answered quietly, "I didn't. He let me go. He said Michael was in trouble and then we-"

"Hold up there, Fi," Sam whispered, leaning in closer. " _Who_ kidnapped you and then just let you go?"

" _Simon,"_ she hissed into his ear.

"The guy they used to burn Mike and then dropped in a black hole? That Simon Escher?" Mr Axe struggled to keep his voice low and under control as he watched Larry's hostage freeing himself of the ropes that had bound him out of the corner of his eye. "He went to all the trouble of kidnapping you and then he cut you loose? Something's not right here, sister."

"He says he wants me to convince Michael that he's here to help us. I dropped-"

"I hate to interrupt such a touching reunion," Dr. Fullerton said, doing just that as he pressed the business end of a Glock-19 into Sam's spine.

While the ex-SEAL had been focused on the happy sight of a freed Fiona and the stunning news of Simon's escape from whatever pit the CIA had placed him in, Anson had untied himself and pulled the weapon he'd had concealed with him.

"But what I really require is your services right now, Ms Glenanne, and if you refuse, then Mr Axe here is going to be learning how to walk again, assuming he survives."

()()()()()()

Nothing had gone the way Michael would have wanted it from the moment they entered the hangar portion at the front of the building. A quick perusal of the space confirmed the layout he'd been given was accurate. The offices, containing all the security cameras and communications areas, were on a second story landing with large glass windows looking down onto the storage and hangar areas below. While they were close to the uniformed guards who had escorted them inside, there were two other agents who remained upstairs behind what was most assuredly bullet proof glass.

His intention had been to lure the men posing as airport security into the warehouse portion where he could appear to render them unconscious before dealing with the two suits manning the security equipment up the flight of painted metal stairs.

But there'd been a shout from the control room and Larry had taken off before Michael could finish smooth talking the uniforms into accompanying him into the back. Whatever was on the monitor had infuriated Mr Sizemore, because he had taken his semi-automatic out and dispatched the two men upstairs in a lightning fast blur of deadly motion.

Which left Michael no choice but to head butt the man closest to him, fortunately the shorter one, dropping him unconscious to the ground before wrapping the taller one in his signature choke hold. Unfortunately, by the time he had accomplished this, the officially expired agent had made his way back, bounding down the staircase and cold cocking his former protégée with a vicious blow to the head using the side of his handgun. Michael fell stunned to his knees.

"I warned you, I told you not to test me and now you are gonna find out what happens when you do." His ex-partner grabbed him tightly by his hair and jerked his head back hard while pulling the younger man to his feet. Force marching him across the room and up the stairs, the incensed ex-operative slammed Michael's head into the counter top upon which the security monitors sat, leaving the dark haired man dizzy and nauseous as he tried to focus on what had upset the other man. On the camera, he saw through blurred eyes the images of Fiona, her back to the camera, her long auburn hair spread over a loose, black flowing dress she wore, working to disarm the deadly vest that Anson Fullerton was still wearing, but there was something odd about it.

"How about I just take this detonator," Larry snarled through clenched teeth as he shoved the aforementioned device in his former associates face. "And blow up good old Sam and Fi along with your doctor friend, huh? How would that feel, Michael?"

"Why is your hostage holding a gun on Sam?" the younger man slurred as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

"What the hell-?" Mr Sizemore was uncharacteristically speechless.

"Who did you say hired you again?" Although his head swam, Mr Westen knew he'd found Raines' leak. Now if he could just turn the older man's wrath on Dr Fullerton, he might have a chance of making it out of this alive.

()()()()()()

"The hard part was getting Larry out of prison. Couldn't let him know who I was because I had to lead him here…and to, well, me..." Dr Fullerton smiled smugly as Sam attempted to shrug into the vest that was far too small for him without all the C-4 crowded into it, urged on by the Glock being pointed at the center of his Tommy Bahamas shirt.

When the DIA psychologists had first introduced himself and let them know who he was, the ex-SEAL was certain he could have taken the bastard, but Sam couldn't risk blowing up Fiona, never mind himself, as he wasn't totally sure who had the detonator at this point in the game.

Fiona for her part sat on her knees and silently fumed. The pain of kneeling on the black asphalt tarmac was playing hell with her lower back as well as her lower limbs and she was almost frustrated to tears. Had she not been almost eight months pregnant, the smarmy little troll would have eaten that gun already.

"But it was worth it. When I saw his file, I knew that creepy father-son thing that those two have was just what the doctor ordered," the traitorous psychologist continued to crow as Fiona knelt behind Sam and attempted to re-wire the vest so it looked like it was functional without triggering the explosion of the less-than- stable device.

"You took quite a big risk, Anson," Sam was constrained to point out. "Larry could have killed you."

"You still don't get it, do you?" the bespectacled blonde continued to explain the brilliance of his scheme. "I hired him. I hired Larry. He doesn't know it, but I've been pulling the strings all along. "

She put the finishing touches on the wiring, hoping for all their sakes that her not so steady hands had done the job adequately. _Whar the hell is thot fecking lunatic?_ she wondered. Her passenger had ordered her to drop him off near Sam's Cadillac. She had been too concerned with what was going on in front of her to worry over much at the time about where the man had disappeared to.

Silently, she cursed a moment over her tactical oversights, but what else could she have done? He had was holding a MAC-10 and he'd hadn't yet pointed it in her direction, so why give him a reason to? But Fiona couldn't escape the fear that she'd somehow driven Michael's executioner straight to him.

It was a testament to how dire their situation was that the question of how Michael would react to her pregnancy had become completely secondary to how he would respond to the three of them being held hostage.

()()()()()

" _I've gone to alotta trouble to hold all the cards today and that's where we are."_

The look on Larry's face as he listened to his no longer useful kidnap-ee outline how he had manipulated the situation would have made lesser men tremble in fear. Michael, on the other hand, had seen it before, both on his one time mentor's face and, sadly, in the mirror of his own victims' eyes as well.

As he stared up at the ceiling, the back of his head now aching as much as the front, Mr Westen decided just to be grateful that Mr Sizemore had slammed the chair he was in backwards before blasting the monitor at close range. As the glass shards flew in every direction, the younger man had enough sense left to cover his face with his arms, which is why he probably missed the other figure stepping into the room and relieving the enraged older operative of the detonator before he could enact his promised revenge by killing everyone in the parking lot outside the building. There was a momentary scuffle before Larry's body thudded to the floor next to Michael's.

"You just rest up a minute, Michael. I'll take it from here," a voice somewhere behind and above his head intoned, the sound of it freezing his blood far worse than anything that had happened yet today.

His vision was going in and out of focus, but there was no mistaking the figure that loomed over him, holding his friends' lives in his hands.

"Simon," he gasped before the blackness took him.

()()()()()()()

Anson Fullerton, in a word, was full of himself and, while he was a clever man, his arrogance had led him to dismiss his captives as less capable than the dark haired man he had planned on manipulating by holding their lives hostage.

So it never occurred to him that was Fiona more than able, even in her current condition, of wiring the vest such that it only appeared to be in working order. Neither did he realize she was also able to silently communicate to Mr. Axe that once she had used the lock pick to open the back door as their captor had demanded, she would pretend to be incapable of getting up quickly, which actually wasn't that far from the truth at the moment.

They didn't like this plan they had concocted with nothing more than eye-rolls and head nods, as evidenced by the glares they shot one another as the pair then surreptitiously handed out the responsibilities they were each to follow. But in the end, Sam did walk through the door in front of Anson, gambling that since the braggard hadn't flashed the detonator at them, he probably didn't have it and Fiona did pretend without too much acting skills to be stuck and required the use of the inside push bar to haul herself stiffly off the ground.

The rest happened swiftly, as she shoved the door closed, hitting Anson with it and knocking him into Sam's waiting arms. The pregnant Irishwoman hesitated probably longer than her companion would have liked had he known before jumping in the SUV and speeding away to call for reinforcements. Praying that the ex-SEAL was indeed as competent to handle the situation as he claimed to be, Fiona finally reached Jesse, explained their tactical problems and got the promise of back-up on the way immediately.

Blue green eyes latched onto the hangar in front of her as the engine idled and she fought the urge to barrel back through the entry doors when the faux CIA black site exploded in front of those eyes and she stamped on the accelerator, screaming her lover's name.

()()()()()()

 _Miami 2011_

 _Gratitude to Sam Axe... what an alien concept that had once been..._

Not quite five years ago, the only thought she'd had upon seeing the man who had ruined her arms deal back in the day was how quickly and accurately she could launch a beer bottle at his head. Now the sight of him stealing into their hospital room brought a warm smile to her face.

"How's he doing?" Sam asked in a quiet whisper.

Fiona looked over at the man she loved who was lying sedated, recovering from his injuries, in the adjacent bed. She had the older man who was perched on the edge of the chair next to her bed to thank for their highly irregular room accommodations, as well as for the fact that Michael was still alive at all.

"They say he's doing better," she answered happily, her thumb stroking over the back of their entwined hands, carefully avoiding all the IV's on both of them.

The weary woman knew Sam had buddies everywhere, but she would have never bet that her friend would have the influence to force the Powers That Be at Mount Sinai Hospital to put a pregnant woman on medically supervised bed rest in the same private room with a man who was mending from being blown up for the third time in his life. The more she thought about it though, the more she suspected that Sam's new relationship with Ms. Elsa Dearbon, owner of an international chain of hotels and hospital board member as well as top ten percent donor, had more to do with it than Mr Axe's charming persuasion.

"And how's our other boy doing?" the older man beamed at her and then her stomach when she laid her free hand upon it.

"Kicking the crap out of me...thanks to you..."

 _She had rushed into the burning building, the panic making her heart hammer so hard she thought she was going to be sick. She was Fiona Glenanne, she had stared death in the face and spit in his eye, but today she was a woman desperate not to bring a fatherless child into the world._

 _She'd found Michael and Larry together in what looked like a pile of debris that had been blasted off the upper wall based on the composition of the blacken building materials and the remnants of the support structure at the back of the building. The air was fast filling with smoke and she knew they had not long to get out. She tried to rouse Michael, who was mercifully still breathing, to no avail. The blood matted in his hair told her he was unlikely to respond._

 _The soft groans that emitted from Mr. Sizemore left her with a potentially more cooperative captive and a swift and satisfying kick in the ribs promptly got his attention. She'd ordered him to pick up Michael and carry him from the inferno._

" _Well, that is tough talk coming from a tiny little psychopath in a what is that? A maternity dress?" He'd laughed aloud at her predicament, but had complied nonetheless when she'd pressed the delivery end of the Mini-14 she'd found in the SUV to his temple to show him she'd meant business._

 _Once outside, she couldn't help but cough up the lungfuls of tainted air that she had swallowed following behind, making sure that Larry delivered her man into the open air._

" _I have always admired you, Fiona," he'd remarked conversationally as he'd lowered Mr Westen's limp form off his shoulders. "I mean with Michael's smarts and your stomach for violence, I mean, hell, the two of you could almost be... me." Abruptly, he'd shoved the insensible body at her and the pregnant woman had ended up flat on her back, pinned under the burden of her lover's unconscious weight._

" _I did say almost, didn't I?" As he'd taken a long knife from his jacket pocket and advanced towards her, suddenly his expression changed from one of delighted malice to one of stunned surprise._

 _It had happened in an instant, but somehow it seemed to play out in slow motion in front of her eyes. A red dot appeared in the center of Mr Sizemore's forehead and then skull, blood and brain matter exploded from behind his head. He sank to his knees slowly, never losing that expression of bald amazement as his body collapsed onto the asphalt._

" _Thank you, Larry, for making my day. That really made me smile," she'd heard Sam intone as the familiar smell of gun powder hit her nose. He was still holding the weapon that had ended the life of his life long adversary in the contest for Mr Westen's soul when he'd knelt by her side to tried to roll Michael off of her._

"Believe me, Tinkerbelle, the pleasure was all mine." Mr Axe smiled even wider still if such a thing was possible and Fiona knew they were thinking of the same thing. "And no, they still haven't found Simon or all the pieces of Anson yet," he informed her before she could ask.

 _After liberating the detonator from Larry's possession, Simon had come downstairs just in time to help Sam finish off Dr Fullerton. It seemed that Mr Escher was keen to have a conversation with Management, who had disappeared after their last run in, and he was convinced that Anson could help him locate his partner if sufficiently motivated._

 _As soon as he was freed of the C-4 laden clothing, the ex-SEAL had headed towards his friend's last given location and Simon had headed out the back door with his prisoner in tow. A forensic examination of the scene concluded that the free roaming psychopath had put the vest and the vehicle's owner in the trunk of the Jaguar before disappearing after he had initiated the blast that had taken down part of the building, knocking Sam off his feet and providentially behind some heavy crates which had protected him and collapsing the second story office where Michael and Larry had been left out cold._

"But, hey, we had the baby shower without you. Maddy couldn't wait. I had to give her something to do to keep her from coming over here and hounding you two twenty four seven."

She sighed. "She means well."

"Yea, I know, but listen, we wanted to get you something special, me and Elsa... and Barry, too. Your favorite little weasel chipped in, too, and he did all the paperwork."

She wrinkled her brow. With those three contributing, the possibilities were endless. Fiona wanted patiently for him to deliver the news Sam was so obviously waiting to share.

"Remember when you and Elsa were talking about how much you missed the farm you grew up on?"

She nodded, a faint smile gracing her lips. It had startled her to learn that Sam's impeccably coiffed girlfriend had started out as one of many on a farm not dissimilar to the one she had grown up on back in Ireland.

"And impossible it was going to be to baby proof the loft?" he continued. "And, you know, I've kinna gotten comfortable in my new operations center, right?"

"Sam..." she drew out his name into multiple syllables. "What did you do?"

"Remember that horse farm out in Davie you were going to use for a safe house? Well, it's your house now, lady, all twenty five acres of it. We closed the deal yesterday." He was smiling so brightly now, it almost hurt her to look at him.

"Sam," she whispered so quietly that he had to lean in close to hear, which was what she'd intended. Fiona pressed a light kiss to his cheek and then grinned just as wide at his stunned expression as she said, "Thank you."

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with Fiona Glenanne," he laughed. "You know, I've heard all kinds of stuff about these pregnancy hormones, but I never believed it until now. You're going soft on me, sister."

"Hush," she commanded. "Don't ruin this or I will get out of this bed and kick your ass." She looked from Sam's shining eyes over towards her man, still deeply asleep but getting better.

"We're gonna have a farm, Michael," she said softly, not caring if Sam heard her or not. She had survived so much to get here and she was going to appreciate what lie ahead for them. "We're gonna have puppies and kittens and geese and ducks and horses and a whole bunch of fat freckled babies, just like a proper Irish man should."

"Don't forget the guns and the C-4," Sam chuckled behind her. "Damned skippy."

"Aye, we'll have gun toting babies, jus' like me mammy did back home."

And Michael Westen slept on, oblivious to the things that laid in wait for him when he'd awaken.


	4. Chapter 4

**_A/N:_** **A/N:** _This is the fourth part of the 5.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 5 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward – Part 4**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Davie, Florida 2012_

 _Fiona's standing over him, begging him to wake up. He can just barely hear her over the roaring in his ears, like she's on the other side of a waterfall a great distance away... He can smell the smoke, but he can't seem to open his eyes and he's confused about where he is..._

 _He was caught in a fire bombing in Belfast, but she had met him with the car outside the club..._

 _He'd been trapped under a mountain of debris after Larry had blown up the refinery in St Petersburg... His ex-partner had left him to die while Mr Sizemore had been faking his own death because he wouldn't be his Kid any more... he wouldn't be an unstoppable sonuvabitch any more...not that way... So why was Larry picking him up now?_

 _He was blown up at his own front door and fallen... jumped?... from the second story landing... Sam had been there... He heard Sam... he heard gunfire... he heard a siren wailing in the distance... the wailing got louder... he heard..._

 _A baby crying?_

Michael was hit with an explosion of sensory input as he was expelled from his dream state and dropped into reality. Fortunately, the reality was far more pleasant than being dropped from a second story office or stairway landing to the hard ground below. This landing was soft, _very soft indeed..._ the mattress was comfortable, _the pillows like clouds that he was floating on... and the warm woman curled into his side was a goddess, his goddess... he was in heaven..._

 _But there are no babies crying in heaven..._

"Michael, it's your turn, remember...?" And the soft, snuggly goddess suddenly had sharp pointy fingernails that probed his ribs... "I was up all night."

Mr Westen's eyes snapped open again and took in his surroundings in the way decades of covert operations dictated, the large, airy, beautifully decorated bedroom with the sun streaming in through the gauzy curtains below the heavier patterned drapes. Tasteful furniture, all with Fiona's touch, filled the space and at the foot of the magnificent white washed sleigh bed was the source of the noise.

The crib… containing his son... Patrick Michael Samuel Westen... who needed his attention...

His body was out of bed, lifting the wailing infant and cradling him to his shoulder, discerning that the soggy diaper was the cause of their child's distress, long before his brain caught up with the rest of him.

By the time Pat was wearing a fresh nappie and a cheerful expression, Michael was standing there dumb stuck, gazing into the blue eyes that were just like his own, struggling to process the facts that he was the happily married, Agency-retired father of the baby boy who was staring back at him and gurgling with delight.

 _How did this happen?_

 _Duh_... Of course he knew _how_ it had happened... He'd even figured out _when_ it had happened- a stray thought about just having stuck to desert and leaving the shower out drifted through his brain- and even _why_ it had happened, or more accurately what was the point of failure of their method of birth control that had worked so successfully up until now. If this was _going to happen_ , then it _should have_ happened while they were rutting like rabbits back in Ireland.

 _What a disaster that would have been..._ and random thoughts about Liam Glenanne finishing that emasculation the man had _almost_ started ran through his mind, too. But the munching noises the infant was making as he jammed his tiny fist into his mouth and started chewing pulled Michael out of his distracted reverie.

He picked up the baby... _his baby...their baby_... and walked out of the master suite.

His father waited until he was downstairs before he started hoisting the black haired boy into the air, knowing that the child's peals of delighted laughter would have surely have awoken his mother. Michael still couldn't get over the ethereal quality of his life. _It just didn't seem real. This couldn't be happening to him._

 _Surely he was in a prison somewhere being questioned right now and this was the agreeable fantasy his mind had been come up with to withstand the torture._

As he took the bottle of formula from the warmer and settled back into the old fashioned oak wood rocking chair that was a duplicate of the one belonging to Fiona's mammy back in Dublin, he knew that was a lie. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined himself feeding his six month old offspring in the cozy and secure confines, more secure than anyone without proper training could know, of his very own horse farm tucked into the secret world of open acreage in western Broward County, less than a thirty minute drive from his childhood home.

As his son drank greedily, Michael alternated between staring at the cherubic face and gazing out the huge picture window at the large, green lawn and the lengthy concrete drive that left from the main house and meandered out through palm trees and saw palmettos towards the gravel road. He couldn't escape the unreal quality of resting in a rocker, holding a tiny piece of himself close to his chest, when he hadn't expected _ever_ to wake up again.

Perhaps it was because his mind had tried to tell him while he was sedated what it had been wilfully ignorant of while he was conscious that he thought maybe this was just another dream. He'd seen some pretty odd mental imagery, Fiona dressed like a Celtic warrior queen, heavily pregnant and defeating their foes with an Uzi in one hand and a block of RDX in the other instead of a sword, but morphine will do that to you. But he'd also had visions so real it made him frequently question the veracity of what he was now experiencing. A life spent living ' _if it's too good to be true, it probably is_ ,' had left him doubting what seemed like a perfect ending. How could _anything_ in _his life_ go this well?

 _A vivid dream of coming back to the loft after dark, of sliding into bed with her after a long siege, bloodied, bruised, but not beaten, not this time, of kissing her neck and her ear and her hair and then wrapping his arms around her waist, only to realize she had no waist, only oversized round breasts separated by an arm's width of ribs and then the rounded belly of a pregnant woman about to deliver... the child in her womb had pushed back at his touch and she had cried happy tears..._

But he'd also had snippets of what Sam had later confirmed to be the truth. He had realized belatedly that Fiona was pregnant whilst trying to disarm a bomb, the black flowing dress not really concealing the truth. He'd had a momentary flash of her confronting Larry with a Mini 14 as he had been stood upright before he had fallen. He remembered the feel of her body beneath his while he had unknowingly pinned her to ground and feel of his arm around her expanded middle...

Michael shook himself. He knew that his face was beaming a warm smile at his baby boy. Just the feel of the infant's weight in his arms was enough to spread a stupid ear to ear grin across his countenance of its own accord. But those things that troubled him, that hurt him, sometimes refused to stay in their boxes, despite the immense surplus of happiness that surrounded him nowadays.

Patrick was chewing noisily on the empty nipple, grinning back at his father.

"Ready for desert, huh?" he queried. "I'm not sure your mom is ready to serve it up, but let's go see."

Michael kissed his little one on the forehead and then hefted the babe on to his shoulder, patting his back and earning an impressive burp for his troubles.

They had learned in the process of trying to wean young Mr Westen that he would happily tolerate, and in fact enjoyed, Dad feeding him formula or expressed breast milk, it didn't matter. But only if it was followed by some of what he was used to his Mom providing. It had left Fiona a bone weary, sleep deprived zombie at first and Michael had cleaned up a lot of baby puke and tolerated massive crying jags until they had worked out just how much of what was required.

As he walked back into the bedroom, Patrick let out a huge belch that woke his mother up with a giggle.

"Time for dessert?" she asked sleepily. Michael didn't answer the question directly; he arranged the pillows with one hand and cradled the baby with the other.

Settling in nearly the center of the bed almost on top of his wife, Mr Westen handed her their child and then proceeded to pull her to his chest, settling Fiona comfortably between his legs and wrapping his arms around the both of them as she arranged her clothing and her breast so their child could suckle.

Happiness like he never knew existed settled over Michael, which was why he spent every feeding he could in this position or somewhere nearby. He had learned to love through intensely painful trial and error with the woman cocooned in his embrace, but loving their baby seemed simultaneously the most natural and the most unbelievable thing he had ever done.

"Do you remember the first time we did this in the hospital?" she asked quietly, her index finger stroking the chubby little cheeks as Patrick fed contently.

He laughed at that. _Of course he did_. It was one of the sweetest remembrances in his entire life.

Sometimes, the disjointed memories of the highly unusual arrangements Sam had been able to secure for them still brought a momentary wave of disbelief. He had woken up enough to feel the familiar shape and not quite recognize the scent… too many hospital room smells. He'd had no idea at the time that they were experimenting with his sedation levels now that the swelling in his brain and internal bleeding had reversed themselves satisfactorily. All he knew was that _his Fiona_ was there, but the IV's and medical equipment had restrained him from making full contact until someone had shuffled closer...

 _Maybe that dream of the loft wasn't entirely a dream after all..._

Really, he remembered only bits and pieces of being in that private suite, mostly rousing long enough to placate himself that his lover was still in the bed right next to him, sometimes she'd been holding his hand, sometimes laying her palm on his uninjured shoulder. Sam had told him with his trademark chuckle that he'd had to do it, otherwise Fiona would have worn herself out watching over the dark haired man when she should have been horizontal and resting herself. It was the best win-win scenario that the former naval commander had ever brokered, in his own humble opinion of course.

He had hazy recollections of her crying out in pain and it dragging him from the depths of his drug induced sleep to find her grunting through a painful series of contractions. _It didn't matter that he hadn't believe it to be reality at the time; it had scared the hell out of him anyway. Her suddenly crushing his fingers should have been a clue to the truth of the situation. But they had whisked her away for an emergency C-section, pre-eclampsia in progress, and someone had turned up his sedation until he couldn't fight it any more. Only Sam's shouted assurance that he would look after her had given the younger man some peace of mind before he passed out._

But Michael did clearly recall sitting up in their joined beds, anxiously awaiting their recently delivered offspring, while he held Fiona's hand and stroked his fingers over her pale and slightly green tinged clammy cheeks, as she drifted in and out of a fitful sleep. _When they'd cradled their baby between them, as they once had held a bomb meant to end their lives, they'd locked fingers and joined foreheads, crying tears of joy which were as tinged with as much relief to be alive as they had been back then._

As he watched the now hearty infant release her nipple and drift off into a contented sleep, Michael couldn't help but compare him to the memory of how tiny the little bundle of baby the nurse had handed them had been. _He'd held Fiona close while she'd nursed their son for the first time and he'd resolved to do it every time he could thereafter and so he had. After missing the majority of her pregnancy, it was the body contact bonding therapy that they all so desperately needed._

 _That and his perennial paranoia had demanded that he not let either of them out of his sight for an instant. Subliminal stings to his sub-conscience moved him to ensure that they would not be left unprotected ever again, but trying to keep watch over them both simultaneously had proven difficult._

And it was somewhat silly he'd finally had to concede, examining it in the light of a tactical analysis the old Michael Westen might have performed. There was a former Navy SEAL, a former CIFA agent, a current CIA agent and a mama bear with all the brass and persistence of all three of the former watching over them, albeit it from a safe, respectful distance to give Michael and Fiona the decompression space they needed to heal properly as well as giving them the assistance the two exhausted operatives needed.

But he wasn't the old Michael Westen and his instinctive drive to protect his wife and child had informed him in no uncertain terms that he had failed to do that properly before and he'd been unequivocally commanded to remedy that situation permanently. Strangely enough, that drive had been the source of their first fight.

And of all the blows he taken off her over the years, none had hurt as badly as her words had.

()()()()()()

Fiona watched contently as her husband… _oh, the sound of that_... had taken their sleeping son and laid the baby gently onto his shoulder, rubbing the blue onesy-clad back while walking around the room with him, before placing their little one back into the crib and disappearing into the bathroom.

The Irishwoman stretched and smiled, quite content with what she had decided to do with her day.

No international conspiracies trying kill them today, no clients to help—not for a long time at least- and no more fucking CIA interfering in their lives. Michael had finally retired, thanks in no small part to the assistance of Jesse, Dani, the recuperated Max and the finally satisfied William Raines. Simon Escher was dead and so was Management at long last. They had met each other in a battle royale that had eliminated them both and ,while she was grateful for the former's help, she really wasn't terribly sorry over the news of his demise.

She stared at the doorway through which her man had disappeared and heard the water start up. It had been his routine of late to take a shower and then draw a bath for her. Fiona had made plans of her own for that time as well. Patrick, unlike his parents, usually slept soundly, but last night he had been unusually fussy.

Her baby boy was probably going to start teething soon, all the more reason to finish weaning him. She'd tried to persuade Michael that it was probably time to move him into the nursery Sam and Jesse had prepared for their _nephew_ , with Madeline's supervision of course. But Mr Westen was having none of it.

And Mrs Westen… yes, _she_ was the _other_ Mrs Westen… She stretched again and sighed contently, remembering then the quiet ceremony with their friends who had become family, some twenty in all, in the beautiful rose garden someone had been kind enough to plant for them before subsequently selling Barry the hobby farm.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift, thinking back to the day he had proposed…

 _The nurse that brought the baby for his feeding had also handed Michael some paperwork for the birth certificate. She was leaning against him as they had sat up in their "twin" bed, which is why she'd felt him tense up. Then she saw what he was looking at and knew what the problem was immediately._

" _Patrick Michael Samuel… Glenanne?" he'd whispered._

 _She'd tried to be nonchalant. "The hospital does that automatically. They always use the mother's last name… I didn't want… I didn't want to assume that you—"_

" _Do I need to go get a priest right now?" he'd asked, his trademark megawatt smile had formed, just before wrapping his arm around the one she was using to support their tiny son in the crook of her arm. "Or can you trust me on this until we can get out of here?"_

" _oh, I don't know," she'd pretended to think about. "I mean, you have had several head injuries… you might not be in your right mind… you could change your mind and if you left me at the altar, I'd have to hunt you down and—"_

 _He had silenced her with a long, passion filled kiss until Patrick had let out a squeak of protest over being crowded. They had both laughed and then he'd leaned into her ear._

" _I know I got this backwards fram tha way we do t'ings back home, luv," Michael McBride's musical voice sent chills down her spine. "But would ya do me the honor o' making an honest man o' me?"_

She giggled at the memory and then frowned. That was the last time he'd touched her with anything resembling desire. Oh, they'd had plenty of physical contact, and she wasn't complaining that he'd suddenly starting displaying a tenderness she'd only suspected existed in there. _Mabbe I shoulda hit ham harder upside tha head all those years ago._ Still, Fiona couldn't help but wonder if there was a connection.

She slid out of bed, reaching for her dressing gown, when she caught her reflection in the mirror and was not pleased with what she saw. Maybe the bigger breasts were sort of okay, but the stretch marks, the swelling and the somewhat rounded stomach all annoyed her. She was ready to blame her self-perceived physical imperfections for Michael's total lack of interest in sex. But there was no shortage of literature on the subject of new father freak out, though granted most Dad's to be didn't get to learn about their new status whilst coming out of a coma after having been blown up by _their_ psychotic former father figure.

Fiona knew it was something more than that or the ever present exhaustion as she slipped into the gauzy robe that left little to the imagination. The weary woman laid a soft pat on her child's back. _Maybe it was the fear of producing Irish twins..._

Michael still touched her, still held her, and still told her how beautiful she was, though she might argue that now. He took care of her and saw to her needs as his own medical condition allowed, but when it came to expressing more sensual desires, there was that odd flavour of the old _'we were together, but we're not really together now'_ dancethey used to do and that troubled her greatly on a deeply subliminal level.

Not that it was all that hard to upset her these days between her natural temperament, the sleep deprivation and the hormones.

She straightened and moved away from the crib, hoping that Patrick was as tired as she was and would stay asleep for as long as needed, and padded silently towards the bathroom door.

Once they were out of the hospital and ensconced in their new home, Michael had taken to following her everywhere, including the bathroom. In a two-story, 6-bedroom, 3-bath, 4600 SF house, Fiona couldn't turn around without tripping over her new husband. At first, she had relished the attentiveness, but her heritage had gotten the better of her and she'd begun to feel smothered.

Independent by nature and by circumstances of her upbringing, the part of her that had longed for his undivided attention had suddenly gotten its fill. Of course, she'd always been a light sleeper, but her on-going lack of consistent rest was probably as big a factor as Mr Westen's uncharacteristic clinginess in the resulting fireworks.

But she'd shouted at him nonetheless, partly she had to admit in sexual frustration, and the look of hurt on his face almost crushed her. She just wasn't used to her dark haired lover letting the depths of his feelings be known. His subsequent watching over her from a distance was even more painful and annoying.

His long-time love had tried to apologize the best way she knew how and they had tumbled into bed together, but it had ended in a gigantic hug marathon instead of a make out session and her barely suppressed insecurities about their relationship, despite the ring, the house and the baby, roared back.

But Fiona Glenanne Westen was never one to choose worry over action. If he was being reticent because he thought he would hurt her, she was going to put his mind at ease right now. If it was something else, she decided as she slipped into the bathroom door to find him wearing a towel and standing next to the garden tub, then the Irish woman was going to meet it head on… and naked as the robe dropped from her shoulders to the floor.

"Your bath's almost ready," he smiled her warmly, but without any of the other fire that had marked their relationship.

"You missed a few spots," she purred as she deliberately settled in his lap in such a way that he was off balance. Leaning in, she licked the wet skin from the hollow at the base of his throat all the way to his ear, giving it a sharp nip, before her heated breath made him shiver. Her hands threaded through his damp back hair and she shifted so that they slid slowly over the edge of the tub and into the warm water.

"Michael," she said his name breathlessly and kissed him hard, before pulling away to capture his bottom lip between her teeth. Then she surged forward, locking her mouth on his in another demanding kiss, her tongue pushing against his teeth until he opened his mouth to her and their tongues finally met in that dance so familiar that it was almost bittersweet it had been so long.

His wife pulled the saturated towel from between them and laid in on the tub rim behind her husband's shoulders and then turned herself such that she was sitting across his lap with him pinned to the bottom of the garden tub. One hand scrapped along his scalp and the other stroked the muscles of his biceps, no longer rock hard from his recent inactivity but by no means soft. When her hand slipped below the water line to thumb over his left nipple, he moaned into her mouth as he tightened his hold on her body.

She rubbed her backside into his groin as she broke the kiss to pepper his neck and cheeks with hot little pecks and nips until she shifted off of him and settled on her knees between his legs. Stroking his inner thighs with her nails, not quite touching him _there,_ Fiona shifted forward and claimed his mouth again.

His hands rubbed along her back, but never moved elsewhere as the kiss finally deepened again and she stroked her hands over his abdomen, feeling the muscles twitch. She pressed into him then, slick skin slipping together.

"It's okay, Michael," she crooned close to his ear. "You don't need to worry; you're not going to hurt me."

The hands that were rubbing her back stopped and came around to cradle her face between those large paws, putting some distance between their noses. "I know, I just…"

"What's wrong? Please tell me, I promise not ta bite yar head off again…do ya nae see me thot way anymore?" The Irish lilt came out along with her anxieties as her voice wavered. The whole Madonna whore complex might have been invented in Italy, but it was hardly unknown in Irish Catholic circles. _Had his perception of her changed that much since she had given birth to his child?_ He had been hit with a multitude of life altering circumstances in a very short amount of time and her panic must have showed in her blue green eyes.

This time he grabbed her by the back of the head, threading his fingers through her wet auburn hair, and pulled her in for an almost bruising kiss that spoke of suppressed hunger. When he released her, ghosting a thumb over her cheek, his expression was that old familiar mix of love and lust. But it shifted again and then it was her turn to look and feel hurt and rejected.

"Whot's wrong?" she asked again, a pleading tone entering into her voice despite her best efforts to keep that from happening. "Michael, I cannae help ya if I don' know whot's bothering ya. Are ya angry wit' me fer shouting at ya? I'm sorry if—"

He cut her off with another hot, demanding kiss and she felt the stirrings of the passion she longed to feel again manifest itself under her backside as she used both thumbs to tease in the way she knew he loved.

"It's nae yar fault, luv," he said softly as he released her. "It's just so much has happened that I-"

"Wer still us," she countered, reaching down to expertly enfold his manhood in her hand. "Wer still tha same two folk who spend tha day in bed, lovin' each other inta tha night…" She leaned into his ear and began to describe all the things they'd done in Dublin and later in Miami while she stroked his length and massaged his balls.

As his body relaxed, his shaft stiffened and she moved again until she was straddling him.

"It's okay," she whispered again as she slowly impaled herself, gradually taking him into her body without ever breaking eye contact. "It's okay," she sing-songed as she fully sheathed him in her warm center, a long moan of contentment answering his low, needy groans as his hands settled on her hips.

"It's okay…" she repeated as a quiet mantra as she began to move against him ever so carefully, her hands stroking his chest in time with the motion of her riding him, sending a small wave of warm water to swirl around the bath tub.

"It's okay…" she assured her lover as their sensual dance picked up speed and his fingers dug into her flesh and he was unable to stop himself from meeting her with thrusts of his own.

"It's okay…" she promised as Michael came undone, losing himself in an orgasm more quickly than he had in years. Fiona slowed the pace, but kept the contact and he enfolded her in his trembling arms and squeezed her tight, shuddering and sighing against her as she laid her head along his shoulder.

"I love you," he told her fervently, though not for the first time since they become parents.

"Good," she responded with a catch in her voice. "Because I've nae been able ta ever stop lovin' ya, even when I wanted ta kick yar ass from har ta Belfast…"

"I think thot's sweetest thing ya've ever said ta me…" he laughed lightly.

"Oh, I think thar's more o' thot yet ta come," she assured him. "But let's get some sleep while we can. We have a big life ahead of us. I wouldnae want ya ta wear out befer I'm done wit' ya, now thot I've got ya right whar I want ya."

"Not a chance, luv, not a chance," he agreed with a dazzling smile. "The best _is_ yet to come and we'll have every day of the rest of our lives to find out what that is together." And he kissed the woman in his arms with all the love that he had.

Until Patrick Michael Samuel Westen let them know he wanted their attention.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** _This is the fifth part of the 5.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 10 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward – Part 5**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Davie, Florida, December 26, 2012_

 _It was a dark and stormy night when I headed out from base… Well, no, not really… if it had been, we both would have been dead…_

He chuckled at his own joke and grabbed his companion's drink as it slipped from his grasp.

 _It was clear and the moon was full. You know how the moon gets sometimes and it's like a night light? That's good and bad. It was good because I could see where I was going… I didn't really know that part of Egypt very well… but it was bad because that meant they could see me too…_

He handed the bottle back with a wink.

 _Be careful with that, huh? Get that on the carpet and we're both dead men._

The other guy in the room at least had the grace to look chagrined.

 _I had known Akhom for almost three years at this point… He was a good agent… He did a lot of work with the Abadbas because that gave him the perfect cover to be working on both sides of the Egyptian and Sudanese border. Except he made the mistake of pissing off his Bedouin allies, which got him staked out in the desert on the wrong side of the Nile between Abri and Wadi Halfa in this little place off the map called Kulubnarti. The Egyptians wanted him back of course, but they couldn't risk being caught pulling him out of the Sudan. The brass wanted to help, but didn't want to risk a lot of manpower over it._

He used the objects at hand to arrange a diagram of the operation.

 _If it wasn't for me, Akhom would have been buried somewhere in the desert, a horror story for diplomats tell one another around the campfire. But I decided it was one of those better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission things. One thing I_ did _learn working with Larry, the winners write the reports and the losers get reports written about them… usually autopsy reports..._

He picked up a small model horse, admiring the colors and the similarity to small Tartars they had used for riding the steep, treacherous mountains as pack animals and mounts during his tours of Afghanistan.

" _Get your ass in that saddle, Westen," Novak had barked at him. "That may be hundreds of pounds of stubborn horseflesh, but you are a Ranger, dammit!_ You tell _that animal what do to, soldier."_

Thanks to his father's attitude about free-loading animals, there were never any pets in the Westen household. Even those strays that braved Frank's ire were soon either encouraged to go elsewhere or poisoned. So, it had been with not a lot of enthusiasm that Army Ranger Michael Westen found himself on an assignment that included using equine transportation, including care, feeding and maintenance.

 _You know what I found out? I actually liked horses once I got to know them. It was like having an Army buddy you could count on that didn't talk back, come back late from leave or steal your dessert at chow._

He reached behind him to pick up several plastic model horses which resembled the beautiful Arabians they had ridden with Northern Alliance tribes during Operation Enduring Freedom. As an intelligence liaison to Special Forces on the ground operating within the tribal allies, he had ridden with the unit into battle on animals trained to run towards gunfire and explosions. He had been grateful at the time to have already learned that particular skill set during his time with the Rangers and his early CIA missions.

As he picked up one model horse in particular, he remembered watching Rayna Kopec, dressed like a tribesman, leaping onto the back of a mount with similar colors. Back then, it seemed everything she did shocked him. No doubt it had to do with the fact he had come to consider her a gender anomaly. She rode better that the tribesman she was infiltrating. Rumor had it she had ridden in Buzkashi games.

" _You think I learned how to ride on the mean streets of Brooklyn? I've had less training than you have. You need to step up your game, Westen. You're never going to sell that cover without riding better."_

He wasn't sure at the time what had surprised him more, that she had let a tiny detail of her personal life slip or that she seemed capable of doing anything she put her mind to. It was an example he had learned from and it had shaken his subconscious stereotype about the inferiority of women to the core.

" _You_ ever _try to cover for me on a mission again, Westen, and I'll let the next Bedouin that catches you-"_

She hadn't had to finish the threat. He smiled at his companion, who was emptying his bottle as quickly as possible now, wondering what Rayna would have thought of him now: married to a hard-as-nails former terrorist, father to a bouncing baby boy, owning a hobby horse farm, of being a trader in horse flesh instead of a covert operative in the field. Then again the business aspects of the equine industry made most industrial espionage and intelligence gathering missions look polite by comparison.

 _So, I was riding through the night, trying to get ahead of the tribesmen, the military patrols and the sandstorm. I kept trading off mounts and then we got to the part of the Nile where it was shallow enough to cross, but also really treacherous because of how marshy it is… Akhom was lucky I liked him._

He demonstrated the convergence of the forces that had been aligned against him as Fiona wandered by the doorway to the room and handed Sam another beer.

The tale came to a crescendo as Akhom, disoriented from his trauma, had tried to run from Michael, believing him to be a Bedouin tribesman come to finish him off, and how the enterprising Mr Westen had had to ride leading one animal on a tether whilst riding his own mount and scooping up the heavier spy into the saddle with him to convince the Egyptian spy that he was there to rescue and not kill him.

 _And then we rode back into Aswan… it took forever, but we couldn't risk going directly in. That was the most riding I had ever done. I finally learned the real meaning of saddle sore on that trip. I didn't ride again for almost a decade after that. I think my backside just wanted to forget what it was like._

Fiona fretted while she listened to her husband divulged highly classified details of an operation he had _never_ told her about. Of course, who Michael was talking to probably made all the difference, but she had _never_ heard him say so much about his former life. When he had rescued her in Cairo, all he would say was that the Egyptian secret service owed him a favor. He had _never_ said what he had done to earn free passage into one of their classified safe houses where she'd been allowed to wait for Seamus after that gun deal involving Sam Axe, some Libyans and the intelligence services of Egypt, the UK and the US had gone horribly wrong. She still wondered if Armand hadn't had some hand in that.

"Well, he seems fine to me," the ex-SEAL told the ex-guerrilla as they stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, watching the ex-spy lying on the floor with toy blocks, model horses and stuffed animals surrounding his fifteen month old son, who was finishing off his lunch and gurgling with delight at his father's tales that the dark haired man was illustrating with all the assembled items around them.

"When was the last time you heard him talking about a mission in that kind of detail? _Ever?_ "

Patrick squealed happily as Michael made a stuffed horse 'gallop' across the 'desert' and 'slam' into the boy, who dropped his bottle again to wrap his little arms around the shaggy cloth toy. His dad was a beat off of catching the bottle this time and it bounced off his fingertips before he caught it with his other hand and quickly blotted up the dribbles of formula from the thick beige carpet with a baby cloth.

"Well, it's not like Pat over there is going to spill the beans to anyone, Fi. I think you're overreacting."

But Mrs Westen had seen some things that had disturbed her profoundly in the last six months.

"It's just not _Michael_ ," she insisted stubbornly, taking out her frustration by burying her knuckles in Sam's shoulder and drawing a startled grunt from the former naval commander.

That caused Mr Westen to look up from his place on the floor, smiling up from his giggling offspring he had been tickling to his apparently squabbling wife and best buddy. "Problem, guys?"

"Tinkerbell hasn't hit me since before yesterday," Sam answered, rubbing his arm with exaggerated care. "Too much Christmas cheer for her, I guess, so she was just making up for lost time."

"Don't make your mommy mad," he told his son with great seriousness. "She's got a mean right hook."

Whatever retort she was going to make was forestalled by the odor that suddenly permeated the space.

"I'll take care of that," Fiona declared, sailing into the living room and scooping up young Patrick from the floor before giving the older man a glare that clearly said _you-talk-to-him_ and departing.

The ex-SEAL settled in one of the many arm chairs that surrounded the toy-strewn area in the center where his best friend laid on his side, still holding the plastic horse that resembled Rayna's former ride.

"So, how you doing there, brother? Still exhausted from trying to keep your ma from buying out Baby Gap and the Disney Store at Dadeland Mall last weekend?"

"I'd rather have been water boarded," came the flat and immediate retort that drew a chuckle from Sam.

"You seemed kinda tense at Christmas dinner," his long-time associate observed mildly.

Michael rolled on his back and sighed. "Too many people..."

Mr Axe cocked an eyebrow, took a swig of his beer and didn't comment further.

"Too much noise," the former spy finally clarified reluctantly.

"Tinnitus still giving you fits?"

"I don't think it's going to stop."

Something in his compatriot's tone gave him pause. "You still havin' dizzy spells, Mikey?"

There was sufficient silence to act as confirmation without requiring additional verbal affirmation. Then Michael rolled back onto his side and fixed the older man with the patented Westen death stare.

"Don't tell Fi," he commanded.

"Hey, she's worried about you, brother, that's all."

"You ever been mother-henned by an ex-IRA guerilla?"

"Fair enough," Sam said, finishing his brew in one go.

()()()()()()()

The auburn haired woman sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the nursery, trying to let the act of breast feeding her son his dessert, as it were, help calm her nerves. Maybe things had gone wrong so often in her life that she just couldn't help but worry. _Except she didn't worry!_ She hadn't since she was eight years old and she wasn't going to start now. Fiona knew she had nothing to complain about truly.

Her husband had been loving, supportive, attentive to her needs and devoted to his son. He had continued to refuse to take the crib and the changing station out of their bedroom and put it in their son's room where she now sat rocking the suckling baby and smiling down at the blue-eyed, black haired cherub. Michael had displayed a gentleness she had only suspected existed from the time he had first fully awakened in the hospital and it hadn't left him once they had moved into their new home.

She still felt guilty about shouting at him. The former covert operative rarely displayed that depth of emotional vulnerability and she had blown it. Fiona heaved a massive sigh and cuddled her child closer to her chest. He had given her space and turned his full attentions onto his _mini me_ and now his horses.

There was hesitancy about him she couldn't put her finger on. She had written it off as him being careful not to impede his recovery, but when did Michael _ever_ take things easy on himself? The ex-spy had always been quiet when left to his own devices, but there was something scary about how little he said to anyone except his son and his equine companions. Even Nate spending time with them had done nothing to change his mood. His little brother should have irritated him into some outburst by now.

There was also the matter of intimacy that bothered her still. They had made love since she had seduced him in the bathroom about nine months back, but it had been rare by their standards and it had always involved a slow seduction on her part before things got heated. There was something off about him and she didn't know how to get him to open up to her again after the yelling incident.

 _Maybe Sam was right_ , she thought as her boy finished on one side and fussed for the other.

"Piglet," she told Pat adoringly as she moved the baby over. Maybe she was just used to things going wrong for them that she was inventing problems just to have something to do. Like she didn't already have enough to do taking care of a child, running a horse farm and looking after an injured…

 _And there is was_. Michael had been _badly_ hurt. He'd had repeated head traumas in the past. This would make at least the _third_ time he'd been blown up in a building and survived… _that she knew of_.

 _How many more times could he do that and walk away without serious long term consequences?_

Patrick gave her just enough of a pull to let her know that he wasn't feeding any more, he was just using her for a human pacifier, and she grinned at him before putting him up on her shoulder to burp. She pressed kisses into his coal black hair and chubby cheeks as she patted his back and tried not to cry…

 _She had seen him shaking his head, pretending he'd been concentrating instead of not hearing what was said, she'd seen his hands tremble, she had seen him take that small step back trying to steady himself… She had hoped it would go away as he continued to recover, but it had been almost a year now since he'd been released from the hospital and he had refused to go for any more testing or consultations, stating that it would work itself out…_

As she continued to rock in a motion almost too fast to restful, her mind went into overdrive, analyzing all of her options and finding them slim, while her son drifted off into a peaceful sleep that she envied.

 _Dammit, Glenannes dinnae worry, they acted!_

Padding silently back to her bedroom, she set young Mr. Westen down for a nap in his crib, kissed his head, clipped on her Blue Tooth, hooked it up to the baby monitor and then went in search of his father.

 _Even when they had no bloody idea o' whot they should or would do…_

()()()()()()()()

While searching for her elusive husband, Fiona had discovered Sam gone and Nate sitting in the living room nursing a bottle of Scotch and waiting for the arrival of his mother and the 'friend' Madeline had introduced to her other son at Christmas dinner the day before. A fast perusal of her texts let her know that older man had gone to see Big Mama. As it was early enough in the day that the younger Westen brother was still functional, she asked him to keep an ear out in case Patrick woke up from his nap. After completing a quick sweep of the whole house, she went out to the stables, hoping to find Michael in his usual retreat when things got to be too much. But she hadn't found her mate there or in the barn either.

Then the thunder of hooves had directed her out to the corral where they saddle trained the young colts. Only he hadn't been training a colt, he had been jumping the series of high fences they had erected to exercise some of the more experienced horses on his favorite mount, a magnificent Friesian mare named Black Beauty, who was 16 hands high and as dark as the hair on his own head.

Standing at the rail, Fiona had taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of the horse and rider before concern kicked in and ruined the moment. When she'd first attracted his attention, Michael had been flushed with excitement. Riding to her side, he had dropped down off his mount and swept her into a tight embrace. But somehow, while wrapped in his arms, she had managed to put her foot into it again.

 _She was just no damned good at this care taking thing._

Walking slowly on the dirt track that ran from the corral back through the trees to the barn, Fiona was furious with herself for making such a mess of her latest attempt to get her husband to seek further treatment. She should have known any mention of how dangerous anything was would sound utterly ridiculous coming out of her mouth. But it hadn't stopped her suggesting that his performance had been compromised by his injuries, even though right at that moment it had not been the actual truth, but it was a potential truth. And when those comments had caused him to draw away from her, instead of retreating until a better time, she had gone on to announce that she had made an appointment for him in Overtown tomorrow, which had as could only be expected turned into an epic fail.

Michael had been quite adamant that he didn't need to speak with the good doctors whom they had helped with a _neighborhood watch campaign_ as Sam liked to refer to it. He had seen them at Christmas dinner and that was good enough. His wife's persistence that he needed additional testing, imaging of his skull in particular had not met with positive enthusiasm. The former operative had tersely pointed out that word of such a thing getting around could be enough to draw any number of his, her or their enemies out of whatever black holes they had crawled into in order to exploit his rumored vulnerability.

The conversation had gone downhill from there with Mr. Westen finally venting his frustration over trying his damnedest to please her and be there for his family, leaving his old life behind and embracing a totally new one with as much enthusiasm as he could muster and apparently she still was not satisfied.

" _You know what really hurts, Fi? You… Don't... Trust… Me… There's nothing wrong with my vision. I see how you look at me. Even when you didn't trust me not to hurt you, you still trusted me in a fire fight. You knew I'd have your back on an op. But you don't even trust me to do that now any more, do you?"_

Pausing on the track, Fiona stifled back a sob. _She had done it again_. All she had wanted was to let him know much she wanted for him to be well, but she had handled it all wrong. _She had been on Michael's case for being clueless and oblivious to other people's feelings for so long, she had never had to consider Michael's feeling of vulnerability before._ She remembered the look on his face as she'd handed him a machine pistol to load the moment after they'd kissed. He had finally come home after being held in Management's prison and they had left immediately because she and Sam were in the middle of a job.

 _First she had smacked him for pouting and then kissed and embraced the ex-spy when she had welcomed him home properly. Oh, how he had crushed her in his arms, trembling in her grasp for a moment before he had been right back on the hunt. It was mere moments before they were fighting again about his determination to look into some kind of international war for profit scheme while working with Vaughn._

Mrs Westen swiped at her eyes as she continued to meander towards the large red barn and adjacent stables and tack room. It was cool under the trees, a welcome respite from the Miami heat and nothing like the cold Irish Christmas days of her youth. She thought a moment about their only holiday together back in Dublin, how much in love they were, how it had seemed everything was going their way then.

After informing her how much her words had hurt him, Michael had jumped back on to the horse and ridden off. She had waffled between getting a mount of her own and going after him, as he'd left the safety of the corral, or just going back to the ranch. As badly as she wanted to follow after her husband, the auburn haired woman wasn't about to leave her son in Nate Westen's care for any length of time.

Luckily, shortly after Fiona arrived back at the main house, the other Mrs Westen had shown up with a brunette in tow and her son and the young lady in question had soon disappeared out the back door while Patrick's grandmother was more than happy to look after her little angel. But as the Irishwoman made her way back towards the stable, the urge to hunt down her husband had all but gone out of her _._

 _She knew she'd just hurt his feelings again anyway._

She shook herself out of her reverie of self-pity as she heard Beauty's whinny in the distance. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the black mare and rider silhouetted against the waning sun and then she turned to face them. As she looked on, the pair sped towards her position and her heart skipped a beat _. He was coming right at her. What was he thinking? What if he had a dizzy spell, what if he-?_

As the horse came charging towards her, she could see the determination in her husband's expression. He was leaning forward, his blue eyes fixed solely on her and, while he had the horse's reins in one hand, he had the other held out towards her.

 _What the hell was SHE thinking? She had offered to die with him… how could she not trust him now?_

Reading his intent, Fiona raised her arms up over her head, locked her blue-eyes on his narrowed blue ones and, braced herself for the impact.

The black mare's shoulder was inches off her side, it's deep snorting breath loud in her ear when Michael's hand gripped the waist of her jeans, pulling her off her feet and into his arms and he did it without taking a single pull on the reins. They teetered for the merest moment before the former operative regained his seat and then horses' long black mane flew in her face as her own auburn tresses were swept up into his as well. Fiona let out a musical laugh, feeling the tension leave as a rush of adrenaline flowed through her veins.

Mr Westen pulled back on the reins, slowing his mount to a spirited trot and then finally stopping in the barn. The Irishwoman let go of the pommel, her white knuckles gaining color again. She didn't wait to utter an apology. She threw her arms around her husband's neck, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and threading the other hand through his short dark hair. Locking her mouth onto his, Fiona poured every ounce of contrition, adoration, love and respect she could into that kiss.

When they broke apart, his smile was dazzling and his eyes were shining.

"Wait right here," he said, carefully lowering her to the ground.

She did as she was bid, staring after him as he took off towards the stables, and looking at him curiously as he returned on foot with a long, wooden ladder that he had made last month. He grinned at her puzzled expression as he placed the ladder against the top of the hay loft and then it hit her.

()()()()()()()()

Once upon a time, when they were young and in love and invincible, they had snuck out of her mother's house at Christmas dinner for some alone time.

 _In need of a little privacy, they had disappeared into the night, as they had walked side by side with along the unlit track with only a single flash light to show them the way. He'd wrapped his arm around her shoulders, holding her tight against his side, while her arm had settled about his waist, her hand tucked into the back pocket of his black dress pants._

" _Are ya sure ya don' mind? I had ta get away...Ta many bad memories o' home." He'd felt a tremor run up his back as he'd explained why he had wanted to get out of a house full of Glenanne relatives._

He had wanted to sneak out of his own house the same way in the midst of the chaos that was Christmas dinner at their new home this year, to find a quiet place to seek the comfort of his wife, but they and their baby had been too much the center of attention to disappear from the gathering unnoticed. They were good, but nobody was _that_ good, especially not in a room full of trained operatives, casual criminals and various other savvy folk with various levels of training and talent.

 _The barn had been filled with bales of hay nearly up to the rafters, but it had taken him less than two minutes to find an old wooden ladder laying in the long grass and before long they were twenty feet up in the air, snuggled down surrounded by sweet smelling hay._

There was a cool breeze coming through the vent at the eave of the barn, something that would never have happened back in Ireland in December. It was one of the few bearable months in Miami heat-wise. The memories of them sneaking away for some alone time from that Christmas filtered into the present.

 _As soon as he'd cleared a spot for them, he'd helped her up the ladder and pulled her down into his lap and into a tight embrace. His lips had trailed hot fervent kisses along her hairline, eventually reaching her lips as his mouth closed over hers. He had deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking against her teeth and gums until she sighed and opened her mouth to him._

As they had before, the couple sat there, her nestled in his lap, kissing and hugging, denim on denim and T-shirt on T-shirt, cuddling in the sweet, smelling hay and remembering what had drawn them together in the first place. But there were no heavy overcoats to remove this time and questing fingers were soon slipping under tops to caress soft skin and hard muscles. One large hand stroked her no longer flat stomach while the other threaded through her long wind-blown hair, cradling the back of her head. Her slender, resourceful digits glided over his abdominals and pectorals in broad sweeps before her thumb settled on one of the hardened nubs, causing him to moan into her mouth as she rubbed small determined circles there.

Fiona pulled his sweat dampened cotton shirt over his head and then cast aside her own form fitting apparel, throwing both the garment up onto the top of the hay bales that made up their little den. The nursing bra was quickly unhooked and discarded as well. He palmed over her breasts very gently, starting into her blue green eyes, asking permission. He hadn't actually touched them, outside of holding her while she breast fed their son, within a couple months of young Mr. Westen's conception.

"It's okay, I think," she said softly. "Pat was very hungry today."

Michael blew lightly over the surface of one and then the other nipple and his wife gasped, squirming in his lap. She threw her head back, the waves of auburn hair spilling over the straw, and raised her hands above her head. He slowly lowered his head to her chest, kissing in between the mounds of soft, pliant flesh as he continued to knead her breasts, before placing small butterfly kisses all around them without actual touching the pebbled nub at the center.

The Irishwoman moaned long and loud and then sucking in a hard breath between her teeth as his own teeth grazed lightly over her truly two most sensitive spots in the entire universe at the moment.

"Okay?" he asked quietly.

"More than okay," she agreed and then swallowed thickly as his tongue swirled delicately over the tops.

Suddenly, his wife grabbed his head between her palms, pulling him to her, skin on skin, chest to breast as she latched onto his mouth with a hungry all-consuming kiss, her tongue pushing into his mouth and claiming it as her own.

Fiona writhed under him, wrapping her still clothed legs around his waist and pressing her center into his groin. She squeezed him tightly with her arms and thighs and now he was the one who could not wait to see all of her, feel all of her bare beneath him.

Nonetheless, her lover slowly broke the kiss and reached between them for the snap to her jeans. She was shinnying out of them as quickly as she could, taking her thong with them and then she was lying on her back, naked before him, as he laid on his side next to her, sunken slightly lower in the golden hay.

Michael reached out with almost trembling hand and caressed the back of her firm limb to the knee before draping her leg over his, exposing her womanhood to him. He laid his hand on her stomach and gazed into her blue green eyes.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered.

"You won't," she assured him. "I trust you."

And that brought another dazzling smile to his face before he pressed his lips to hers in a long, languid kiss while his supple fingers slid across her heated folds and into her center. He took his time manipulating her into ecstasy with feather light touches and just the right amount of pressure from the hardened heel of his hand over her clit. Fiona's moans become whimpers as she found her release. Michael felt himself stiffen painfully. He knew where he wanted to be more than anything.

He turned onto his back before removing his own denim barrier to heaven and then covered her quivering form with his own as she came back down. Her smile was broad and tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes. But her husband was sure it was not from pain.

"Fi," he breathed her name. His blue eyes filled with adoration as he hovered above her, his whole body shivering with need.

"It's okay," she promised, as Fiona ran her hands over his back and sides, pausing only when he pushed slowly into her. "It's o-kay."

Her soft sighs were like music to his ears, encouraging him onwards. He began to move as slowly as he could, small thrusts which took him deeper into her depths with each stroke. But apparently his wife wanted more. She raised her legs and wrapped herself around him, her heels catching him on the behind and letting him know just what she wanted.

Memories of the Christmas long ago in Dublin merged fully with the present as Fiona's fingers combed through his hair, her short nails scraping over his scalp, then scratching over his shoulders and down his back, her hot breath in his ear, urging him on, begging him for more.

"Let go," his lover pleaded. "Let go, let go."

With a moan, as her strong limbs gripped him tighter and her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, he finally did as she bid and increased his rhythm, bringing them both to the precipice and then crashing over the edge into a sea of post coital bliss.

Cuddling together, they rested in their nest of hay as their breathing gradually returning to normal.

"You trusted me..." He placed a kiss to the top of her head.

"To the very end, ya know that." She half turned so she could look into his eyes. "D'ya trust me?"

"I always have."

They remained silent for a while. She kissed the center of his chest and snuggled into his side, as he lazily pulled several strands of hay from her tousled hair.

"Fi?"

"Yes?"

"I'll go to Overtown and do the tests if that's what you want."

"Don't do it because-"

"I'll do it _because_ I do trust you, too."

When she wriggled up his body to cover his face in feather light gossamer kisses, he enveloped her in his strong arms and there were mutual 'I love you's whispered between them as they rested together in the gathering of evening.

And once again kissing turned to other enjoyable things as they had truly became joined in mind as well as body and soul.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** _This is the sixth part of the 5.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 15 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **5.01 AU – High Risk, High Reward – Part 6**

 _An alternate for Season Five and beyond following on from 4.18 – Last Stand_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Davie, Florida, September 1, 2013_

 _iro·ny_

 _noun \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\_

 _: the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny_

 _: a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected_

She had sworn from the time she was a little girl that she was not going to worry. She used to tease Michael for being so cautious, chiding him for refusing to have what in her opinion was fun. She was all for high risk, high reward whenever the odds looked to be in her favor or her back was against the wall.

There had been no such thing as safe in her world, only varying degrees of dangerous as she navigated growing up in a Republican family in Northern Ireland, joining the ranks of the paramilitary soldiers at a young age and a woman to boot, becoming a career criminal specializing in explosive armed robberies and finally arms dealing, first with her family and then on her own with a stop in between as second in command in her lover's weapons of war empire. She never sweated the small stuff or any stuff really.

She watched as her boys trotted, then cantered about the corral, Patrick sitting in front of Michael, his almost two year old fists gripping the pommel tightly while his father guided the black mare with one hand and held onto his offspring with the other. Fiona told herself firmly there was nothing to worry about and she wasn't going to do it if there was. Her husband had taken the tests, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable in the hospital gown, two things he hated more than anything. He'd rather be in pain, he'd said. Pain, at least, he knew how to deal with; it was almost an old, if often unwelcome, friend of sorts.

The MRIs were not radically different than the ones they'd taken as he'd been released from the hospital many moons ago. They'd showed not much degradation or any improvement. _It is what it is,_ he'd said with a shrug. He'd learn to adjust and compensate for it and that was the end of it. There were no treatments to be had to do anything for the headaches, light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, dizziness, the fogginess that sometimes impacted his cognitive function or the persistent ringing in his ears.

He'd done what she asked and the Irishwoman decided that she was not going to watch her husband die a little each day by trying to keep him safe from dying all at once, even if it was _killing_ _her_ to do that.

"Time's up, fellas, we need to get to the docks or Sam is going to leave without us." She trotted over with her hands outstretched to relieve Michael of the child perched in front of him on the saddle.

"Ready to go catch some bugs?" his father asked.

"Bwgs…?" their little one repeated, his face screwing up in confusion.

"Not the ones you were trying to eat in the barn," Mr. Westen clarified. "This kind swim in the water and taste good after you cook them."

A shudder ran through Fiona has she remembered catching her son attempting to stuff a cockroach, even though Michael insisted it was a palmetto bug and not a roach, into his mouth that Pat had found in the hay. It wasn't about the insect so much as she'd very nearly lost her temper over the incident.

"Only you could make lobster sound so unappealing," His wife teased. He'd already explained to her that was what the natives called the spiny Florida lobsters that were legal to catch and cook after August 6th. He'd spent many a late summer snorkeling and scuba diving in his youth to capture the tasty treats.

Her husband shrugged and then swung down off the horse, taking a moment to surreptitiously or so he thought regain his balance, before taking the reins and walking around the front of the animal to stroke her forehead. His other lady love stood back a pace, having learned that Black Beauty could be jealous.

"I'm going to get Pat cleaned up. Take your girlfriend to the barn and cool her off. Then meet me upstairs." She was grateful he had chosen to walk the mare out instead of jumping her over the rail.

The dark haired man beamed that heart stopping, joint melting smile of his and waved to the toddler before heading towards the gate to the corral, the large black Friesian in tow. Fiona sighed deeply as she headed towards the house. She had her tactical plan for the day in order and she was sticking to it.

 _Heaven help whoever messed that up_. That brought her up short for a moment. _When had she become so regimented?_ When the answer to her question called for her attention by pulling on her red gold tresses and grinning about it, she smiled back _. Who knew_ she _could turn into a wet rag nursemaid?_

"Down!" her offspring demanded and he was off like a rocket towards the house from the moment his little feet hit the ground, leaving his mother in the dust temporarily until she took off after him laughing.

Back in the main house of the twenty five acre hobby horse farm, Patrick Michael Samuel Westen seemed determined to live up to all his DNA simultaneously. Michael's _mini me_ had shed his clothing in preparation to leave. Except now he was a naked black haired little blur, zooming around his room, attempting to stuff _all_ his toys into one bag and refusing to put on his bathing suit and cover shirt.

A child with the merry disposition of his dearly departed Grandfather Glenanne and the same penchant for trouble as well as his _uncle's_ easy peasy attitude and fondness for libations of all sorts, their son could also be intense and serious like his father, especially when disassembling things, and quick tempered like his mother, particularly when the things he'd taken apart refused to go back together.

Fiona knew that her joy over Patrick's learning to walk had been a little longer than ten point two seconds. But finding herself forever chasing down the boy who had apparently decided to skip walking and move straight onto running, she had begun to doubt if that was the case. Patrick almost literally got into everything. While baby proofing in their house had run more towards making sure all the guns and explosives were out of reach, the list of more mundane things that could hurt him was long indeed.

"Are you planning on going skinny dipping your first time in the ocean, son?"

Mr. Westen walked into the room just in time to snatch the little streaker up and carried the bundle of giggling, squirming arms and legs into the bathroom with him, volunteering to wash up himself and the toddler at the same time. Fiona shook her head, only a little miffed that she was very quickly being replaced as Patrick's favorite person on the planet. Grandma or Uncle Nate was no match for his Da.

Her cell phone rang and she spent a few minutes trading barbs with the other person who rocked young Mr. Westen's world, assuring Mr. Axe that they would not delay the commencement of the lobster hunting and Pat's ocean immersion initiation celebration as part of what the older man had planned for his favorite nephew's early birthday present and Labor Day weekend festivities. The fact that Sam's new lady had a string of luxury hotels, big boats and bigger assets was not surprising; that he loved her for more than that was. Saying goodbye, she sank down into the rocking chair. _Why was she so worn out?_

If she were being honest, she'd have acknowledged keeping on an eye on both Michael and Patrick at the same time was exhausting. Not normally a patient person except when cooking up batches of C-4, Fiona found herself feeling a great deal of sympathy for, as well as guilt over, the time she had shouted at the former spy for hovering over her and their child as though he was on embassy body guard duty.

Now _she_ was the one trying to perform covert surveillance, albeit PIRA-style as opposed to anything that would have been Agency approved. As such, she was happiest when the two of them were together. His wife hoped that her husband took it as her desire for him to bond with their son, which was certainly there of course, as much as it was just easier to furtively watching over the pair of them together.

Michael had already dialed it back by taking on the hobby horse farm thing instead of the spy life. Now that all his enemies are dead or disappeared, he was finally okay with that. But being who he was, her lover would throw himself into whatever whole heartedly, regardless if he was truly healthy enough.

And she did appreciate the fact that the former covert operative had become more considerate of his limits with their son around, which was another reason she preferred to have the two of them together, and she was determined to be support of anything that helped Michael continue to be… _well, Michael_.

He couldn't shoot a firearm without doubling up the ear protection, he wasn't supposed to be around the fumes in any event and explosives were out on both counts. Even though the horse breeding business was pretty competitive and riding and racing their steads was fun, it was almost as dangerous for someone with dizzy spells as tearing through the streets of Miami in a muscle car. _He had lost enough already_. There were some things she was just going to have to bite her lip and deal with.

As she slipped into her swimming suit, two sizes larger than before much to her disgust, the Irishwoman noted another thing which didn't thrill her. However, since she couldn't shoot them, she was just going to have to live with her wider hips and bigger boobs. At least since that day in the barn, they seem to have overcome their intimate issues and things had gradually improved in the relationship department. Although Michael still seemed more interested in cuddling and comfort, things had picked up nicely and, despite her earlier fears to the contrary, her lover seem to enjoy her more ample proportions.

That was good thing, as Michael now spent more time showering with their son than her these days. She didn't realize how much she missed making love with him in that massive old claw-footed tub while the stream got cold. Soon _she_ was going _to need_ a cold shower if she didn't get her mind back on the task of getting ready to go, the redhead reminded herself as she heard the water cut off in the next room.

()()()()()()()()

Biscayne Bay, September 1, 2013

Sam's booming laughter sounded across the water and the figure of Madeline Westen waved back from her place on the picnic tables near the boat slips on Elliot Key in Biscayne State Park. Nate and his date de jour were tending to the fire, which at the moment was being used to make burgers and dogs, to keep the coals hot for cooking the crustaceans his older brother and companions had pulled out of the water. Watching Patrick's reaction to his first face full of salty Atlantic foam had the former SEAL laughing out loud at the toddler's startled and then delighted squeals as they bobbed in the waves.

Standing at the back of his girlfriend's Boston Whaler 345 Conquest measuring their catch to ensure that nothing was too small to take and keeping the quartet of spiny lobsters in their bag, Mr. Axe had paused in his task long enough to see his favorite nephew get splashed by the wake of another boat, as the divers went past to head into deeper water quicker than was necessary in Ms. Dearborn's opinion. Elsa's comments from behind the wheel made him smile too. Big Mama took seaside safety very seriously and was completely put out with people buzzing by a boat which clearly had a dive flag on display beside it.

They could take two more before they had their limit for the day. But once the lobsters were cut in half, slathered in butter and laying on the grill, no amount was going to be enough. They would have a more conventional party for a two year old on Patrick's birthday in a couple of days. This was Sam and Elsa's present to the little boy, which was really more of a present to his best friends. Sam knew Mike missed diving, which he could no longer do, but snorkeling was still on the list as long as his buddy was careful.

"We'll make an old salt outta ya yet, Big Guy," the Navy man called out while the toddler shrieked and slapped the water and his mother averted her face from all the splashing. Far from being afraid of the rolling clear blue waves, Patrick was as fascinated with this water, despite the saline content, as he was the hotel pool, his pool at home, the large pond the horses drank from, the creek at the back of the property, the Jacuzzi on the back porch, his mother's garden tub and his own bathtub. There was a reason the young man took showers whenever they wanted to get somewhere in less than two hours.

Enthralled with watching her son delight in playing in the ocean, Fiona didn't notice immediately that Michael hadn't returned to the surface from his last foray into the lobster loaded reefs and mud holes lining the bottom of the ocean. Glazing quickly around the relatively shallow azure depths, she couldn't see him anywhere on her side of the boat. Swallowing down her panic and telling herself he was just on the opposite side, Fiona forced her voice to remain calm so as not to startle her baby boy.

"Sam, do you see Michael?"

The ex-SEAL did a quick scan on her side of the vessel before disappearing to the other side of the craft.

"Sonuvabitch!"

Sam's swearing was followed by a loud splash as the man dove into the drink. Fiona swam as quickly as she could, holding Patrick above the waves, around the back of the boat. A blonde teenager was on the surface, gasping for air. But as she looked straight down from the girl's location, she saw Michael's apparently insensate form floating just above the bottom, the naval combat diver stroking towards him.

"Elsa, take the baby!" she demanded, handing her boy to the brunette who had come to port part of the boat once her boyfriend had gone overboard. Sensing his mother's distress, the toddler cried out.

But the Irishwoman was already under the water, using her muscles and her adrenaline to propel her towards her unconscious mate. She met the other man near the surface and helped him bring Michael up into the boat. While Sam practically leapt up onto the vessel, she begged her husband to answer her, terrified by his blue tinged face, slapping his cheek lightly, afraid of what other injuries he might have.

The older man took the ex-Ranger under the arms and hauled him into the aft of the craft as the former terrorist scampered aboard, deliberately deaf to the sniffling sobs of her son, who was more frightened by the fear radiating off the assembled adults than by the sight of his father lying prone on the deck.

"Call the Coast Guard!" Sam ordered as he checked for injuries before turning the inert man onto his side, assuming his buddy had swallowed more than seawater than was healthy. A small amount leaked out before he moved the limp form onto his back once again. His wife immediately clamped her fingers over her husband's nose and her mouth over his and began rescue breathing. The navy medic checked for a pulse and listened in on his best friends lungs. Fiona's focus narrowed to four breaths, pause, four breaths, pause, four breaths, pause… over and over again until she was almost dizzy herself.

"Look out, Fi!" he ordered, flipping Michael on his side again as the injured man vomited and then coughed violently. Gasping for air, he began to struggle until the ex-SEAL pulled him up into a position to breathe easier. "Get this tub moving, lady," Sam said, giving her a steely-eyed look that brooked no contradiction. "The Coast Guard's too far out. We're gonna have to take Mikey in. I've got him, GO!"

The tactical part of her brain took over and she jumped up from the deck and into the cabin. Sam was a Navy medic and she was a gun runner with years of experience moving volatile cargo across the water at high speeds without damaging it. As much as she wanted to stay by Michael's side, her friend was far better suited to caring for her man and she was better off behind the wheel in the cabin, where at least Patrick could see and touch her. As expected, her baby boy latched onto her back as Elsa stood behind, supporting him and directing his mother while she called for an ambulance to meet them at the marina.

Having put the powerboat through its paces, she changed places with Ms. Dearborn, allowing the owner of the vessel to dock it while she returned with her somewhat settled down son to the semi-conscious form of his father. Carefully avoiding the mess on the bottom of the boat, she came to Sam's side. Fiona didn't have to ask, her long-time associate already knew what she wanted to know.

"It was touch and go, but I think we got him outta there in time, sister. But he's going straight to the hospital, no arguments from—"

"Just get our room ready," she requested tersely.

With a nod of his head, Mr. Axe looked from the determined woman back to the pale flaccid form between them. With the normally exuberant Patrick clinging to her like his very life depended on it, Fiona reached out a hand to stroke the white wet cheek of the man whose life she depended on too.

()()()()()()

 _Miami, September 1, 2013_

Michael's coughing and gasping followed by lying lifeless had been scary enough, but the convergence of the Coast Guard finally catching up to them and the myriad of emergency personnel on the dock had threatened to set Fiona Glenanne's fiery temper alight spectacularly when they all started arguing where they were transporting him and who was required to stay behind and answer questions, as they tried to bar her from entering the ambulance carrying her child dug into her side like a terrified tick.

In the end, it had been the combined efforts of Sam Axe and Elsa Dearborn and a surprise appearance by her former boyfriend, Jon Campbell, who had sorted things out such that Michael was soon being given oxygen in the back of the latter's emergency vehicle while she sat up front introducing the ex-spy's offspring to the man she had once tried to use to make his father jealous as much move on with.

When they had started to sedate and intubate her beloved, it took all of Campbell's patient persuasion to convince the redhead that this was what was best for the former covert operative based on the brief medical history she'd give him while dashing alongside the gurney from the powerboat towards the rescue vehicle and that his fellow paramedic was very good at his job and not to be concerned.

The older man who was running various tubes into and monitors onto the man she loved continued on, informing her that they might need to perform continuous positive airway pressure or intubation with mechanical ventilation with high positive end expiratory pressure or even extracorporeal membrane oxygenation for severe pulmonary oedema. Campbell could see Fiona's blue green eyes had a familiarly dangerous glint, a cross between addled, apprehensive and angry, and he tried to draw her attention.

Unfortunately, not before words like myocardial infarction, pulmonary oedema, pneumonia, cerebral hypoxia, septicaemia, cerebral oedema, renal failure, haemolysis, hyperkalaemia and acidosis could attempt to enter her vocabulary. The Irishwoman was grateful to her former beau for distracting her with inquiries about Michael's symptoms and causes of injury and future prognosis, which allowed her to make it to Mount Sinai without committing a possibly justified homicide in front of the tense toddler.

Elsa was somehow able to ease Patrick, who was now almost exhausted from the emotional overload, from Fiona's arms so she could follow along behind her husband as they rushed him into the hospital.

It took a little more than patient persuasion to stop her from following Michael into the Emergency Room. Jon was prepared for the beating of his lifetime, when suddenly she sagged against him and he was so startled that the paramedic almost allowed her to sink to the ground. Whatever had overcome her, it had to be serious. Because the Fiona Glenanne _he knew_ had always been in control of herself.

After staining his uniform shirt with salt water for a few moments, Fiona apologized profusely for her lapse, embarrassed that she had lost control at all, never mind in front of a former flame. She detested the powerlessness she felt almost as much as the fear. Saving him from drowning she could do; preventing the follow-up conditions was another matter. Worse yet, once he recovered, it would just add another layer to the injuries he had already suffered. Biting down on her lip until it bled, she fought to bring herself back to the practical paramilitary she had once been and could barely just accomplish it.

Campbell smiled with that kind expression which had once enamored her as he gave her a quick hug.

"Mike's a really lucky guy … Never had a chance, did I?" he joked, hoping to lighten the mood.

"No," she mumbled, still embarrassed by her behavior. "You called me out on it ages ago."

"Come on," he offered. "I'll take you back. But tell me more about what's been going on with Mike."

()()()()()()()

 _It happened so fast… one minute he was watching the sunshine filter through the water… he could see Fiona and Patrick on the other side of the boat… her lithe limbs treading in the ocean, his chubby legs kicking, his little hands slapping the surface… he looked back down for a moment, reorienting on his prey… two bugs trying unsuccessfully to hide in the rocks and the sentiment at the bottom on the sea…_

 _Then he sees it off to his right in the distance. Nothing wrong with his vision yet, although it had started to get blurry when the headaches came… He can tell now by her body language that the gangly girl is stuck. The blonde had dug her hand in somewhere, looking for lobsters same as he is, and now she can't get free. He had been a combat diver too. He can read the panic in her posture._

 _Reacting as he had been trained, reacting on his well-honed instincts and experience, reacting based on who he was without a thought for his current limitations… He dives hard and fast, knowing how much air he has left, not knowing how long the kid has been down there, determined to make it a quick rescue._

 _There's nothing wrong with his muscles… he can do this…except the pressure in his head is now mounting exponentially and the amount of oxygen he thought he had to work with is not adequate. He digs around her hand and with one last hard tug on her arm, she's free. He pushes the teenager towards the surface…At least he thought he did… He needs to get back to them… to his family… Which way is up?_

 _His lungs are burning and the pain in his chest explodes, only exceeded by the white hot searing that sets his brain on fire…Why is it so dark if he's on fire? The water has to be boiling, he's so hot inside…and then he's not…now it's dark… so dark now… so cold…so numb…so black…so…so…sooo…_

 _Excruciating…the agony fills his starving lungs… no, it's air… the air he needs to live… to get back to them… Something else is coming… he's swallowed the sea water… and now it's coming out… right now…he retches and coughs and wants to hurl some more… at least it's not in his lungs… or much of it…_

 _Patrick's wailing… Fiona's there somewhere, he can feel her presence just the same as he can feel Sam's strong hands gripping his biceps, turning him back over… He's so damned tired and it hurts so much…_

 _He can sleep for a minute… just a minute… get away for just a minute… they won't let anything happen…_

()()()()()()()

All the excitement was over. Michael was in the room, hooked up to all the monitors and tubing, _things to watch him, things to make him better._ They still have him on a breathing tube and it was killing her to see him like that, to listen to the mechanical hiss and click. _Reminds her so much of the only damned movies he likes to watch, something from his childhood…But at least it's making sure he's breathing…_

He was pale as the sheets he was lying on and his head was still damp. The flurry of activity was over and the vigil had begun. Fiona's fingers carded through his hair, shaking slightly as her slender digits tried to restore some order to the black strands, remembering another time when she had stood over his bed like this. Patrick was a month away from being born and she could barely walk, her lower limbs so bloated and tender. He was much worse then. _His face then was a mass of bruises- purples, greens, yellows- swollen, scraped, singed and slashed, little tiny cuts and large lacerations. He had still smelled of the acrid fumes that had engulfed the warehouse that night and had threatened to choke them both_.

But she couldn't kiss his mouth now either and once again she settled for his forehead. _At least this time she could bend down without her little one in the way…_ and again a tear dropped down to splash there.

" _Hey, Fi, how's he doing?"_

 _The smell of Old Spice and gun powder had arrived in the room along with Sam's greeting. She hadn't turn away from staring at her lover, willing him to live._ How do you get blown up three times and still live through it every time? Had their luck finally run out? _But she hadn't given voice to those thoughts; she'd refused to vocalize such a thing. Their baby was_ not _going to grow up never knowing his father!_

 _Taking one of his battered and scorched hands between her own two puffy palms, Fiona had been afraid to make a move out of concern for disturbing him and for ruining her own precarious balance._

" _He's going to live," she had whispered, trying to convince herself as much as stating a fact._

" _Damn straight, skippy," the older man had agreed with more force than necessary. "Mikey's too tough to go and you'd kick his ass if he tried."_

 _Fiona remembered trying to laugh, but it had come out trembling and reedy. When Sam had wrapped one of his large arms around her thin shoulders, she had leaned into the comfort a little too far and had almost fallen. The look on the naval commander's face was shock, followed by sheer determination._

 _After depositing her in a chair that he had moved to the bedside with an order to stay put, he had left. When Mr. Axe had returned two hours later with a brigade of orderlies and nurses in tow, Ms. Glenanne had found herself in lying in a hospital bed conjoined with the one in which Michael had been recovering._

" _You're on bed rest, missy," he had informed her sternly, but with a twinkle in his merry brown eyes nonetheless. "I went to a lot of trouble to get these sleeping arrangements, so don't let 'em go to waste."_

The Irishwoman looked past the pale figure before her to the bed pushed up against his, just as it had been back then when they had rescued Michael from the rubble of a CIA secret prison in the guise of an airport hangar and from the clutches of Larry Sizemore. Sam had finally gotten to do what Michael never had been able to: put a bullet between his mentor's eyes. _It had made the older man smile, really smile._

"How's he doing, Fi?"

"Better, I hope…" _It was hard to tell. He was so still._ As she felt the naval commander embrace her just as he had then, she let her weight shift yet again. _Only this time she wasn't shattered and pregnant._

 _No, she was just utterly fatigued and completely drained with a million responsibilities on her shoulders._

"Better, huh…? Seems to me someone else could use a little nap, too." They both were looking at the bed on the other side of the slumbering ex-spy. "Remember, I still had to go to a lot of trouble to get these sleeping arrangements again, so don't let 'em go to waste, missy."

"I need to—"

He didn't let her finish her sentence. "You need to be _here_ , with Mikey. Elsa's made arrangements for everyone to come back to the hotel. Maddie's got the Big Guy all settled down now. Reminded him of the time he got the flu a couple a months ago and now it was Daddy's turn. He'll be good for now."

 _Fiona remembered that too well. It was not a happy memory for her either_. "But, the horses and the—"

"You guys have good hands on the farm, right? Let 'em do their jobs. Jesse and Dani will stay out there and keep an eye on things just in case, okay? You need to worry about _you_ _two._ "

She smiled wearily. The last time Sam had said that, it had been _need to worry about you three._

"Alright," she agreed on a huff. There wasn't a chance she was going to be able to sleep with Patrick off somewhere, admittedly in good company, her horses and her house unattended, except for the two government agents, and her husband hurt, albeit lying right next to her in a top flight medical facility.

 _No, she wasn't going to be able to sleep at…._ were her last thoughts before exhaustion took her.

()()()()()()()

 _Miami, September 3, 2013_

Michael awoke slowly. The first thing that occurred to him was his throat felt as if he'd been gargling glass shards in acid and the center of his chest felt heavy. The ex-spy was pretty sure the sandpaper sensation in his airways was due to a ventilator, which had mercifully been removed. At least his headache was no longer blinding, so that was a vast improvement. He made a concerted effort to remain still and breathe steadily, wondering again about the weighty sensation in the center of his sternum. But he was alive if not well, which was definitely progress from his last set of circumstances.

He drifted in and out of consciousness of a moment, wondering about the heavy sensation that also ran down the ribs on his right hand side. Cracking an eyelid, the light caught something and then he realized it was the small silver charm bracelet he had given to Fiona when Patrick was born, a picture of him holding their newborn son inside a silver heart-shaped locket that hung from the little sturdy chain.

Opening both his blood shot eyes a little wider, he realized that the weight he had felt was his wife's hand laying on him. Shifting his head gradually, Michael caught sight of her long auburn locks partially covering her face as she slept next to him on the adjacent hospital bed, not quite touching him save for her fingers and forearm. Knowing his beloved was a light sleeper, he tried not to move much more.

She looked so tired and care worn and he knew he was the cause once again. Maybe it was his guilt, or maybe it was really there, but Michael thought saw tear stains on her nose and cheeks. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her close, to kiss away her concerns. However, his limbs were too heavy and too attached to too many monitors with alarms and he knew she would wake. _She needed the sleep_ , he decided. A slight smile spread over his face as he watched her fitful slumber, knowing that Sam had once again arranged that they be allowed to recuperate together. _Had she been hurt too somehow?_

It didn't seem likely as she was wearing, as near as he could tell, a soft cotton T-shirt and loose fleece pants instead of the dreaded hospital gown. The combat diver let out a long breath slowly and realized his lungs ached as well as his airway. Bits and pieces of what had happened came back to him then and he tried his best to push the memories away, _reliving the pain and the panic would do him no good now_.

Turning his attention once again to the woman he loved, he remembered the first time he'd awoken in their unusual sleeping accommodations at Mount Sinai Hospital. He'd flirted with consciousness a number of times before actually awakening enough to really get a good look at the Irishwoman who'd stolen his heart. Then his own heart had jolted hard when he'd realized she was massively pregnant.

 _Time stood still and then skipped around his brain while he'd tried to put the pieces together, a timeline of 'where' and 'when' because the 'what' was pressed up against his forearm, the little person inside her belly delighting in dancing about apparently while the worn out woman next to him was trying to get some rest. Her features and her hand draped over her rippling midsection looked swollen and pale._

 _Anxiety for her condition battled with his own angst over his new reality that was pushing against his languid limb._ Why hadn't she said anything? _But the question had answered itself before it was asked. She knew what he was up against and she knew he could have never completed his mission to hunt down everyone in the organization that had burned him if he had known then what he suddenly knew now._

 _Michael could barely swallow the lump in his throat. Nate had lost his family and Fiona had guarded over not only his first family, but their new one as well while he had been off and gone chasing his hidden and no so hidden enemies. She had been so opposed to everything he had done from the day he landed in Miami and yet she had his back every inch of the way. She'd helped him with his thing while she'd tried to move on and they'd both tried to leave each other behind, but there was just no denying destiny._

 _Those weary blue green eyes had opened and stared into his, a hesitant smile forming on her face as she waited for some reaction on his part to her unspoken albeit self-evident news._ What else could he say?

" _I love you, Fiona," he whispered, his voice rough from disuse, watching happy tears well up in her eyes as he said those three words out loud that he'd only ever said with his expressions and his actions before._

"I love you, Fiona," he repeated in the present, laying his large paw over her small hand pressed over his heart, before going back to sleep so quickly that he never knew that she'd heard him.

()()()()()()()

When he woke up again, the redhead who had haunted his dreams was nowhere to be found. But his mother and his little one were there, sitting in the chair beside the bed and reading a picture book.

"Hey, Champ," he croaked, hoping he wasn't scaring his son. "Hi, mom," he added, grateful for her help. He raised the bed up into a sitting position at a leisurely pace, not wanting to startle them or jar himself.

"Well, look who's awake now?" Madeline said in a sing-song voice, putting the book back into her enormous woven purse. "See, I told you Daddy was getting better and he'll be coming home real soon."

"Da!" Patrick called out and then stood up in his grandmother's lap, reaching for his father.

"No, sweetheart, you can't get too close. Your Daddy's still a little bit sick. You don't want the flu again."

"No!" the toddler agreed, dropping back down and covering his mouth and nose with his hands dramatically. Michael couldn't help but laugh, even if it hurt, and he tried to make the grin reassuringly.

"Your Daddy will be coming home soon," Fiona reiterated as she finished coming through the door. "You can see him after lunch, okay? Go with Grandma and get some lunch now."

Patrick was clearly torn between wanting to stay with his father now that the man was awake and going with the older woman who usually let him have the sugary treats he normally wouldn't be eating. But the call of cake was too strong at the moment, the taste of it still on the toddler's tongue from earlier today at his birthday party, and he jumped to the floor and barreled into his mom's legs. Fiona held him fast, lest he get away from his grandmother and go tearing through the hospital corridors like a cheetah.

Mrs. Westen stood up, going to the door and grabbing her grandson firmly by the hand before the black haired boy could change his mind. " _You stay with Grandma_ and we'll go see what we can find," she promised, nodding to the other Mrs. Westen as she was dragged into the corridor by _the Big Guy_.

His wife sat down heavily in the chair at his bedside, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath. As she looked back up at him, Michael reached across the bed railing to cup her cheek in his rough palm and Fiona leaned into his touch for a moment before sitting back in the chair. It was obvious from her appearance that the redhead was working hard to keep her tone level and her expression neutral.

"Well, I've had a word with the doctors and it seems you haven't done much _more_ damage to your lungs. There's no sign of pneumonia or pulmonary oedema, so the antibiotics must have done their job. How's your head? Cuz they'll be taking another MRI of it tomorrow just to make sure it's on straight, my opinion notwithstanding. They'll know then if there're any side effects from your little diving trip."

Michael bit his lower lip and looked properly abashed. "I'm sorry, Fi."

"For what exactly…?" The woman he loved asked after the silence had grown uncomfortably charged. She now had that look on her face the former operative had learned meant an impeding explosion.

"Excuse me?" the man countered, buying time to shore up his defenses ahead of the gathering tempest.

"What are you sorry for, Michael? For trying to give _me_ a heart attack? For terrifying your son or just for missing his second birthday while you were unconscious in a hospital?" She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and tried to rein in her temper. "What were you thinking? What happened out there?"

"The kid had her hand stuck in a hole and couldn't it get out. I was—"

"So you swam to the rescue without thinking about the fact that there was _a reason_ you were snorkeling instead of diving, right? And it never once occurred to you to flag down the Navy SEAL up on deck?"

"She was in trouble, Fiona. I didn't know how much air she had left. She was panicking." Michael was feeling even more defensive the way his lover was questioning him. _Was he supposed to let her die?_

"Because _you_ drowning instead of her would have been better, is that about right? You just said it yourself, _you didn't know_. _Sam_ could have saved her, _I_ could have saved her. We were _right there_ , but-"

"Yes, you're right," he assented, trying to assuage her growing displeasure. "I didn't _know_. I made a judgment call based on my experience. I did what I had to do to save her life. I said I was sorry, Fi."

The words hung in the air while the infuriated Irishwoman locked her jaw, drawing a harsh breathe in through her nose before unclenching her teeth. Michael realized belatedly that he'd screwed up then. _He'd justified far too many of his actions one too many times with that phrase and that attitude._

"You didn't hear _anything_ I just said, did you? Do you have _any idea_ of what _I've had to do_ these last few days?" she fumed, her voice low and dangerous. "You missed your son's birthday and thank God he's too young to remember that. _Either one of us_ could have saved that girl. D'ya know what _we_ _can't do_? What _Sam_ can't do? What _I_ can't do? _We_ can't be Patrick's Da. _Only. You_. You think about _that_ , about _you_ being there for _your son_ , Michael, because I can't be Patrick's mother _and his father!"_

She stood up, leaning over the bed rail with fire and sorrow burning in her eyes. "You want to know what else I can't do anymore? I can't stand here again, watching you in a hospital bed, wondering if you're going to live or die, wondering how the hell I'm going to protect our child before it's ever born not knowing if you're even going to be around to see them born. I can't do it anymore. _I just can't!"_

"oh, Fi…" He reached for her, trying to take her hands, but she stepped back.

"I love you, Michael, I know who you are, I love who you are. But _you_ _have to_ think who _you are_ to the people _you're_ important to. You _were_ a soldier, you _were_ a spy. You _did_ your duty to your country. Now _Patrick_ needs you, _we_ need you, _we all do_ , _more_ than the rest of the world does. You _think_ about _that!_ "

Fiona spun on her heel, her long auburn locks flying in her wake as she stormed out of the hospital room. Luckily for the door, it had a keeper which prevented it from flying off its hinges. Then he heard the voice of his mother out in the hallway, asking her favorite daughter-in-law what the problem was.

Michael couldn't really make out what was being said. But experience had taught him that, whatever it was, his mother would be discussing it with him shortly and _it would be his fault_ , regardless of reality. He wanted to lower the bed. His headache was back with a vengeance and he felt totally drained.

However, he had no desire to take on the _Mama Bear_ that his mother could turn into when anyone, himself included, messed with Fiona while lying down. So he sat there awaiting the fireworks. Several moments later, the door eased open and the spiky blonde hair appeared followed by oversized earrings.

"Hi, honey…" Madeline slipped inside. "Forgot my purse," she added with an almost nervous chuckle.

Michael turned his head and took in the huge straw bag still sitting beside the chair. His mother slipped into that same piece of furniture she had abandoned earlier and scooted it closer to the bedside.

"How are you feeling?" the older woman asked, a strange sympathy in her bright blue eyes.

"Fine," he lied.

"Oh, don't be like that, Michael," she chided gently.

"Okay, fine, I feel like hell. Where's Pat?"

"Fiona said she was going to take him home for a little while." His mother laughed. "That boy of yours sure is a handful. He would have run rings around you and Nate when you were little. You two boys-"

"Ma…" He tried to stop himself from groaning. "I'm sure you're not here to take a trip down memory lane." The ex-spy took a long deep breath and tried not to wince. "It's not going to be helpful anyway."

"Oh, I don't know about that. I think there are a few things you could still learn from the past."

 _Like What? Never trust anybody? Never let a drunk asshole near your kids?_ He bit back his bitter retorts.

"Will it teach me how to not be who I am? Will it teach me how to set aside thirty years of training and experience and be someone I'm not? Will it teach me how to not keep hurting Fiona?" His string of frustrated questions was as close to a tirade as Madeline had heard from her son in a number of years.

She stood up and stepped next to the bed. When her hand rose towards his cheek, Michael almost flinched, expecting a blow. His mother smiled sadly before laying a gentle hand to his face and then a tender kiss to his forehead, which was crinkled in confusion. He was anticipating a lecture, not comfort.

"You were a good soldier and you were a good … whatever you were… You always tried to help people." She shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe not in a way people always understood. But now you just need to remember that who you are is Patrick's father and Fiona's husband and you're good at that too, honey."

"Apparently not good enough," he groused, trying to mask his hurting heart behind an ill temper. _He couldn't just stand by and watch someone die, especially a kid, if he could help them._

She patted his cheek again, but inside his memory it was a resounding slap. _How many times had Fiona been furious and hit him for doing just that? Standing back and letting bad things happen to good people because that was the mission, because the bigger picture was more important than the little guy?_

Another memory flared up: her in the loft, an open landed smack stinging his jaw, rocking his head and a litany of things that she couldn't stand anymore, lying to a friend, ruining his career, and being okay with that because of danger to other people, ones he didn't know and would never know all over the globe.

 _I can't stand what you're turning into._

 _Which is what?_

 _Someone who only cares about the idea of people who doesn't give a damn about the ones who have his back every single day!_

"Mom," he said softly, trying to choke back the conflicting emotions. "I _know_ how important being a good father is…but I-

"But sometimes you just want it both ways?" She made that little ironic sound, somewhere between a titter and a chortle that she often did. "I always wanted us to be together as a family, but I didn't want you boys to have to grow up like that either. It was tough sometimes, trying to decide what to do."

"How did you deal with it?" Now that he was a parent too, he could see a little more of her side of it.

"I made a choice and I lived with the consequences. We all did." She kissed his brow and stepped back.

"I don't think I can do that," he mumbled, staring down at his hands studded with IV and monitors.

"I know you can't. Your father couldn't do it either. Once he saw something he wanted both ways, he'd do whatever he had to do to have it both ways. Usually it was the rest of us who paid the price. But he was a genius at it. You got that from him, honey. You'll figure something out."

The blonde reached down and picked up her bag. "You get some rest. I'm gonna go help Fiona."

Michael closed his eyes. He might sleep, but he wasn't going to _rest_ until he figured this out _._

()()()()()()()

His wife didn't come back the rest of the day.

As much as Michael didn't like it, her absence gave him a lot of time and space to think about what she had said. Caught between who he had been, who he thought he was and who he just might turn out to be, Michael struggled to come to grips with what his injuries over the years had done to his capabilities and reorganizing his priorities _really_ meant. He thought about Paul Anderson, _the Ghost of Christmas Future_ as Sam had called him. _In the end, all you really have are your stories_ , the man had said.

What would _he have_ right now, if it wasn't for Sam, or Jesse, or his mom, and of course Fiona and Pat?

The former covert operative had drifted off into a light slumber when he felt a slight tremor in the joined bed frames and then her presence filled his senses. His heart sped up as he waited to see what her mood was. Fiona slid onto the bed and slowly across the mattress. He knew that she knew he was awake now, but she was giving him the option of pretending to sleep if he wasn't ready to talk.

"Fi," the dark haired man who held her heart breathed her name as he reached for her. But Michael was soon hindered by all the leads and tubing. A frustrated groan issued from his suddenly dry lips until she shuffled closer, pushing her man onto his back again as she settled into his side without putting any real weight on his recovering ribs. Fiona laid a palm lightly along his jaw line, saying his name with adoration.

"I'm sorry," they both began simultaneously and then stopped, started again together and then laughed.

"Go ahead," he spoke softly, taking her hand in his and laying over his heart. The redhead swallowed thickly and blinked rapidly before composing herself. Even in the dim light, he could the unshed tears shining in her beautiful blue green eyes.

"I'm sorry for shouting at you. I shouldn't have said what I did while you're flat on your back in hospital. But that doesn't mean I'm apologizing for _what_ I said. I meant every word of it," she reiterated, lest he think he was suddenly off the hook for nearly getting himself killed. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I was just so-" Fiona's bit her lip, gulping down the fear that she refused to set free again.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Michael stated sincerely, getting straight the heart of the matter and skipping sentences that involved words like _worried, scared_ and _frightened_. "I didn't mean for that to happen. I didn't think that I—"

"You didn't think, _period,_ " the Irishwoman interrupted. "You just acted. That's supposed to my M.O."

That brought that sly smile to his face. "So you're saying the Jimmy Choo's are on the other foot now?"

"Well, I've always been better than you at tactical analysis, but _you're_ supposed to be the one with all the _self control_ ," she grinned back. "How could you forget what your primary mission objective was?"

"I don't know," her husband murmured, suddenly serious, and he pulled her hand up to kiss her fingers. "It's… it's hard for me to…. I mean, I know I… I just want things to be like they were, but they aren't."

"I know who you are, Michael, and you're still the man I love in here," Fiona laid their hands back over the center of his chest. "I know it's hard to let go of things sometimes, we both do. There _have been_ a lot of changes in our lives since you finished off the people that burned you. Some have been bad, but most of them have been good." She leaned in and kissed him tenderly. "You need to remember that."

"You and Patrick, you're everything to me. I don't want to lose you."

"And we don't want to lose you, Michael. Please promise me you'll be more careful. It doesn't mean you're not Michael Westen anymore. It means you're going to be around to be Patrick's Da."

"I'll—" And the word _try_ almost left his lips, but the pleading in her eyes stopped it cold. "I promise."

"Thank you," she whispered before kissing him again. "Thank you for both of us."

()()()()()()()

 _Miami, September 10, 2013_

"There you are," she sang out as she stepped into the hospital room where he had been kept captive for nine days. The dark blue sundress swirled around her knees and something was wrong with the way the top fit. Her red brown hair was pulled back into a loose plait at the back of her slender exposed neck.

Michael was more than ready to go home. He had been taken down for one final series of tests and the anticipation of being able to get back into his street clothes and head to the house was almost more than he could contain. _He finally felt human again_. The ex-spy smiled brightly at his wife and she came over to perch on the edge of the bed. She'd been gone when he'd awoken this morning, which had set off a momentary panic. However, he had reassured himself that she was merely home washing up and fetching clean clothes for him. After almost two weeks, he was more than ready to dress and depart.

"You were gone when I got here. I thought maybe you had decided to escape without me," Fiona said with a mock pout. "I talked to your doctors while you were having all those pictures taken of your insides." She ran a palm over his chest, her thumb scraping lightly over his right nipple and he fought down a shudder. Taking his beloved home and giving her a proper apology was high on his _to-do_ list.

"They gave me a clean bill of health?" He had felt well enough to go home after the first week. But because of his medical history, the doctors had been overly cautious in his opinion, but not hers.

"As clean as you're going to get, with qualifications," she answered. "And I talked to Campbell about it."

"Talked to Campbell?" he questioned. "About what?"

"Why, Michael Westen, are you jealous of my old beau?"

He made his _don't-be-ridiculous_ face that Fiona found adorable.

"He helped save your life. You should be a little more grateful."

"As long as that's all he did," Michael muttered lowly.

"Actually, no, he took me to lunch while we were waiting for you."

"And?"

"And he had some very interesting suggestions, which I will share with you all in good time."

Fiona got up off the side of the mattress and sashayed around to the other side. Crawling across the bed on her knees, she laid down next to him, snuggling into his side and draping an arm and a leg across his body. Putting her head on his shoulder, she sniffed deeply, inhaling his scent. He had showered and shaved and would most assuredly have put anything on besides a loose fitting garment if he could have.

She picked up one of his hands, rubbing her thumb across the back and pouting again. "Nasty little needles. Are you ready to not come back here for a very long time, Mr. Westen? Have you learned your lesson? Are you feeling better, Michael?" The last query was solely concerned for his health, not sassy.

"Yeah, Fi," he agreed quietly. _She was so beautiful. She looked relieved, but still not rested_. He would have to see what he could do to take care of that situation as soon as they were back on the ranch.

"So, now that you're detached from all that equipment and all cleaned, are you ready to go out and behave yourself this time?" she asked as she started pressing little butterfly kisses to his neck and ear.

"Actually I was thinking of not behaving myself a little later," the former operative announced. His large hand closed over her left breast, gently squeezing the pliable flesh. Then he realized what he been wrong with the top of the blue garment. Her bosom had been hanging lower and looking larger.

"You're not wearing a bra," he wondered. Having taken to wearing a nursing bra right before Patrick was born, his beloved had continued to utilize the support even after they had finally weaned their son.

"I'm not wearing _any_ underwear," the redhead informed him in a seductive voice and then moaned low when he pinched her nipple through the light cotton fabric. She gave him a nip on the ear and then returned the favor, stroking her own thumb over the hardened nubs on his chest.

"Let's go home already," Michael's voice was husky and sent shivers down her spine.

"Actually, there's something we need to talk about first."

Whether he groaned because of what she had said or because her fingers had shifted from teasing him above the covers to slipping below them and caressing his abdomen was uncertain at first. When her hand moved lower still to rub delicately over his manhood and the thin cloth barrier between them, Fiona was pretty sure that she had his full attention, _in one way_ in any event.

"We need to find a way to indulge your reckless nature that I approve of. Something that won't land you back into a hospital bed…" Things began to stir under the sheets as her expert ministrations moved muscles that had been dormant for a couple of weeks. She purred into his neck and felt him shudder.

"I'm not going to be able to get out of this hospital bed and put my clothes on if you don't stop now."

"Who says I want you to get out of this bed and get dressed right now?" The hand that had been massaging her breast dropped down and clamped over her wrist, trying to still her movements.

"Come on, Fi, seriously, someone could walk in on us any time."

"Exactly…" She sat up and slipped her other free hand underneath everything, encircling the semi-flaccid center of his universe with a warm firm grip. "You could be discovered at any minute. Rather perilous, isn't it, Michael? Not knowing when you might _be exposed_? Pretty reckless behavior in my book…"

"Fi, stop…I mean it…"

"So do I…" Her Cheshire Cat grin was from ear to ear. "This is _just_ the kind of _danger_ I approve of."

She gave him a squeeze then that loosened his grip on her other hand and before he could stop her, Fiona had pulled everything out of her way. Her hair was tickling his stomach and his thighs while her soft moist mouth descended on his hardening length. Swirling her tongue around and lightly sucking on the delicate flesh turned a feeble protest into a shaky groan, as Michael tried to pull the sheet over her.

"They're still going to know what I'm doing," she said from under the make shift tent and to prove her point, she began to move sedately up and down, exaggerating the movements and sucking hard on the head. His breathing quickened and he gave up on stopping her, cupping her breast that he could reach.

She hummed with desire and he almost lost his mind as the vibrations sent shockwaves of pleasure through his recently recovered body. "Fi… Fiona… Fi, stop, please!" he begged, now panting hard.

The Irish temptress threw the cover back, merry mischief in her eyes. "Do you want to watch, Michael?"

Using her saliva, she started stroking very lightly again, with a _barely there_ touch. Her husband's wide blue eyes kept flicking from the door to what her hands were doing and back as he reached for her again. But she was too fast for him this time and pinned his arms to either side of his head before using her body weight, slight though it was, to hold him in place while Fiona leaned down and capture his mouth in a hungry kiss that soon demanded more. Her tongue slid across his teeth, ordering entry.

He moaned again, but it was a cross between lust and distress and his flame haired wife pulled back, settling on his stomach and releasing his hands. "I'm sorry, Michael, was I too rough on you?"

The ex-agency man practiced breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth for several seconds. _Who knew those techniques they'd taught him on the Farm would come in so damned handy?_

"It's okay, just give me a second…" he gasped.

Now Fiona was truly looking contrite. "Michael…"

"It's okay, Fi," he repeated. "Just go slow, okay?"

Taking her cue, the petite but not quite lithe woman spread her skirt around her, covering her lover's exposed stomach and thighs, before reaching underneath it to ease herself onto to his eager length. Once fully sheathed, she paused and gazed into his bright blue eyes. "Okay, now?" she asked.

His smile was a little shaky, but his eyes contained only adoration. "Okay, take your time. I'm sure Sam can get us out of whatever trouble we get in so long as I don't have a heart attack lying here."

"I can think of worse ways to go," she countered as she squeezed him with muscles only he knew she had. "But we wouldn't want to embarrass Elsa with that kind of publicity."

Smiling sweetly, Fiona began to move in a measured pace, the sweet friction making both their hearts beat faster, pumping blood and swelling with love for one another. Michael's large paws were covering her breasts, palming and rubbing with more insistence until she was biting her bottom lip.

Grinning wolfishly, her husband slipped his hand under her hem and found her most sensitive spot, teasing and stroking as she moved against his engorged manhood, causing her to be the one to shudder and moan. The heat of their intimate connection began to spread through her body, spurred on by his persistent touch. Her chest heaving, her head thrown back, her mouth slack, every nerve ending singing with pleasure, Fiona lost herself in bliss. The visual was more than enough to finish throwing Michael over the edge and he joined her there in a place of ecstasy and intimacy.

His Irish lover kept from collapsing on him, holding herself over him on shaky arms, her hair fanning out around them while they gazed into one another eyes. However, looks of contentment quickly turned to looks of concern as the voices of Madeline Westen and Sam Axe sounded in the hallway, calling after the rapid footsteps which could only have belonged to their blue streak of a boy.

"Mammy! Da!" their son bellowed as he barreled into the door. Fortunately for both their dignities, Fiona was able to sweep off of Michael, flicking the sheets back over him as the toddler struggled to push the heavy wooden barrier out of his way. A quick glance over her shoulder told her that the dark haired man had managed to lift the head of the bed and cover himself sufficiently to erase the evidence of their intimate afternoon activities.

"Feeling better, Mikey?" Sam asked as he stopped halfway in, his special ops trained senses picking up on the weird energy in the hospital room.

"The best," he responded, unable to keep the satisfied smile off of his face.

"So, Fiona tells me they're letting you go home today?" his mother made her way to the bedside beaming a smile at her son and grandson. The little boy was trying unsuccessfully to scale the bed rails.

"As he gets showered off, we can all go home," she grinned back at her husband. "Michael's had enough of living dangerously, haven't you?" His only response was a suppressed chuckle.

"Come on, Big Guy," Sam said, picking up his favorite nephew and throwing him up on his shoulders. "Let's go say goodbye to Auntie Elsa while your mom's helping your dad get washed up."

"Maybe we can find something special for you to eat," his Grandma added, happy for once that she hadn't received scowls from Patrick's parents.

The ex-SEAL gave them both a look that clearly said he knew how they had been utilizing the hospitality of their special sleeping arrangements before he closed the door behind him. A few seconds later, Michael and Fiona burst out laughing, the tension evaporating and leaving them with a first class case of the giggles that they couldn't get rid of even as they gathered his new outfit and headed towards the tiny bathroom that was even smaller than the one back at the loft.

"Ready to see who can catch us out in the shower?" she chuckled.

"No, not here, anyway," he countered. "I have a feeling that close call with Patrick won't be the last."

"Well, then you'll have plenty of opportunity to take risks, won't you?" She leaned in and pulled his bottom lip between her teeth, nipping lightly before releasing him. "There's forty five hundred square feet of house and twenty five acres of ground we might get caught on by more than one person."

"Here's to risky business," he agreed, drawing her in for one last passionate kiss before going home.


End file.
